Uber taps Hertz to clean, charge, and fix its Lucid Motors robotaxis

Uber’s forthcoming luxury robotaxi work with Lucid Motors and Nuro is getting a 4th partner: Hertz.

The companies announced Thursday that Hertz volition supply “day-to-day conveyance plus management, including charging, maintenance, repairs, cleaning, and depot staffing.” The service, announced past year, is expected to motorboat by the extremity of 2026 successful the San Francisco Bay Area, utilizing Lucid’s Gravity SUVs and Nuro’s self-driving tech.

Hertz is handling this enactment done a newly-established affiliate it’s calling Oro Mobility, which the rental institution says volition “provide integrated fleet absorption solutions crossed a scope of mobility segments.”

“As the manufacture transitions from personally owned vehicles to commercially operated driver-led and autonomous fleets, Oro aims to capable a captious orchestration and operations gap,” the Hertz property merchandise reads.

This is not the archetypal clip Hertz, which went done a bankruptcy restructuring process successful 2020, has followed caller mobility trends.

The institution made a large splash successful 2021 erstwhile it announced it was buying 100,000 EVs from Tesla, quality that helped Elon Musk’s car institution scope a $1 trillion valuation for the archetypal clip (and helped Hertz’s representation arsenic it emerged from bankruptcy). Hertz besides announced plans successful 2022 to bargain up to 175,000 EVs from General Motors, and another 65,000 from Polestar.

None of those deals were ever afloat realized, and Hertz started a occurrence merchantability of the EVs it had bought in aboriginal 2024. It did that successful portion due to the fact that of higher-than-expected attraction costs owed to Uber drivers renting the EVs, and due to the fact that Tesla slashed prices to stave disconnected contention and boost sales.

Starting up a fleet absorption and operations arm, though, should beryllium person to Hertz’s halfway competencies arsenic a rental car giant. Competitors similar Avis are already doing this kind of enactment for Waymo. And with robotaxi companies seemingly keen to usage 3rd parties to negociate this portion of the puzzle, Hertz could physique a decent concern with Oro.

To wit, Hertz and Uber said Thursday that they volition “explore enlargement opportunities successful 2027.” Uber has deals with dozens of autonomous conveyance companies astir the world, and has plans to bid astatine slightest 35,000 robotaxi-ready vehicles from Lucid Motors unsocial successful the coming years. It’s starting with 10,000 Gravity SUVs, and precocious announced plans to bid different 25,000 EVs from Lucid Motors that volition beryllium based connected its upcoming mid-sized platform. (Uber besides present owns much than 11% of Lucid Motors arsenic portion of investments it has made alongside the conveyance orders.)