Electric vehicles
Billion deal: car rental company Hertz orders 100,000 Teslas
The US car rental company Hertz is investing billions in the expansion of its electric car fleet with a large order from Tesla. Photo: – / kyodo / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
Tesla remains in the fast lane: With a multi-billion dollar large order from the car rental company Hertz, the group of star entrepreneur Elon Musk is setting another exclamation mark.
The US car rental company Hertz is investing billions in the expansion of its electric car fleet with a major order from Tesla.
Sixt’s rival announced on Monday in Estero, Florida, that 100,000 Tesla had been ordered by the end of 2022. The financial news agency Bloomberg had previously reported on it, citing insiders, and named it a purchase volume of around 4.2 billion US dollars (3.6 billion euros).
Hertz said they wanted to build the largest electric car rental fleet in North America because of people’s keen interest in electric cars. From November, customers in the USA, but also in some European cities, will be able to book Tesla’s Model 3. In addition to the order, Hertz announced that it would install several thousand charging stations. “Electric cars are now mainstream,” said Hertz transition chief Mark Fields in a press release.
With the order from Tesla, the proportion of electric vehicles in Hertz’s global fleet should increase to over 20 percent, according to the car rental company. The purchase of the vehicles is the company’s first major initiative since bankruptcy proceedings closed in June. Hertz had applied for bankruptcy protection in the Corona crisis, but then quickly recovered.
Tesla is gaining ground
Tesla’s shares reacted in early US stock market trading with a price jump of more than five percent to the bulk order. The market value of Tesla exceeded the one trillion dollar mark for the first time. Few companies like Apple, Amazon and Microsoft have done this so far.
Star entrepreneur Elon Musk’s group is currently on a wave of great success anyway. Despite the global chip crisis and delivery problems, Tesla earned more in the most recent quarter than ever before in a quarter. In the three months to the end of September, profit rose 389 percent year-on-year to $ 1.6 billion, Tesla announced last week. Sales grew 57 percent to a record $ 13.8 billion.
Tesla copes well with material shortages
Although the automotive industry as a whole has been groaning for months under the semiconductor shortage, shortage of containers, traffic jams at seaports and other bottlenecks in the supply chains, Tesla has so far been able to cope with the burdens relatively well. In the third quarter, the company brought 241,391 vehicles to its customers, around 73 percent more than a year earlier. Production in the three months was just under 240,000 e-cars. The major Hertz order corresponds to around a tenth of Tesla’s current annual manufacturing capacity.
In order to be able to cope with the already high demand, which has now increased suddenly due to the order, Tesla is dependent on being able to quickly start and ramp up production in new plants such as Grünheide near Berlin or Austin, Texas. However, this should not be easy, in Germany Tesla still lacks the final approvals – the schedule has long been behind due to bureaucratic discrepancies.