Uber’s upcoming luxury robotaxi service with Lucid Motors and Nuro is getting a fourth partner: Hertz.
The companies was announced On Thursday, Hertz will provide “day-to-day vehicle asset management, including charging, maintenance, repairs, cleaning and warehouse staffing.” The service, announced last year, is supposed to launch by the end of 2026 in the San Francisco Bay Area, using Lucid’s Gravity SUVs and Nuro’s self-driving technology.
Hertz is handling that work through a newly formed subsidiary called Oro Mobility, which the rental company says will “provide comprehensive fleet management solutions across a range of mobility segments.”
“As the industry transitions from personal vehicles to commercial fleets of drivers and autonomous vehicles, Oro aims to fill a critical orchestration and operations gap,” Hertz’s press release states.
It is not the first time that Hertz, which went through a bankruptcy restructuring process in 2020, has followed new mobility trends.
The company made a big splash in 2021 when it announced it was buying 100,000 EVs from Tesla, news that helped Elon Musk’s car company reach a $1 trillion valuation for the first time (and helped Hertz’s image as it emerged from bankruptcy). Hertz also announced plans in 2022 to buy up to 175,000 EVs from General Motorsand another 65,000 from Polestar.
Neither of these deals ever fully materialized, and Hertz began selling the electric vehicles. had purchased in early 2024. It did so in part because of higher-than-expected maintenance costs due to Uber drivers renting the electric vehicles and because Tesla cut prices to fend off competition and boost sales.
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However, establishing a fleet management and operations arm should be closer to Hertz’s core competencies as a car rental giant. Competitors like Avis already do this kind of work for Waymo. And with robotaxi companies seemingly keen to use third parties to manage this piece of the puzzle, Hertz could build a decent business with Oro.
For example, Hertz and Uber said Thursday they will “explore expansion opportunities in 2027.” Uber has deals with dozens of autonomous vehicle companies around the world and plans to order at least 35,000 robotaxi-ready vehicles from Lucid Motors alone in the next few years. It’s starting with 10,000 Gravity SUVs and recently announced plans to order another 25,000 EVs from Lucid Motors that will be based on its upcoming midsize platform. (Uber also now owns more than 11% of Lucid Motors as part of the investments it has made alongside the vehicle orders.)
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