Tesla delivers nearly 50,000 electric cars to Hertz

The story of Hertz ordering Tesla electric cars may as well get a book written about. It all started with Hertz nearly going bankrupt and apparently averting the bankruptcy by ordering 100,000 Tesla Model 3, which sent the Tesla stock for the first time to over $1 trillion valuation back in 2021.

Only then Tesla to deny there was any deal at all. From then on the story just got weirder and weirder. Some time later Hertz was claiming the first deliveries were already happening while Elon Musk was tweeting there was no contract between the two companies. And then Hertz went and added extra Tesla Model Y units to its order, which apparently didn’t exist.

Hopefully both Hertz and Tesla managed to untangle the crossed wires by now. Hertz is reporting that out of its 428,700 vehicles in the US, Tesla vehicles representing 11%. That’s just over 47,000 vehicles, which is less than half of the alleged initial 100,000 vehicle order. Add to it 1,187 Teslas from global operations and we arrive at just over 48,000 cars.

Hertz is being a bit coy about its numbers and did not disclose any more details. The initial order of 100,000 Model 3 vehicles was pretty straightforward. The addition of Model Y complicates things a bit - the company never explained whether that was on top of the 100,000 units or part of it.

To make things even less clear, Hertz recently began the Tesla rental program for Uber drivers. In fact, Uber drivers had preferential access to Tesla vehicles through Hertz and the company claimed it was making 50,000 Teslas available to the program. In December last year, Hertz announced that 50,000 Uber drivers did rent a Tesla from the company.

What do we make of those numbers then? 50,000 drivers renting Tesla out doesn’t mean 50,000 Teslas - 5 drivers can share a car each week if they don’t use it for long periods. The fact that Hertz promised to make 50,000 Teslas available doesn't necessarily mean they had all the cars at hand - there was no deadline on that announcement. It could have been spread over the next year or two.

It seems Hertz is trying really hard to paint as good a picture of itself as it possibly can. If we just look at its fleet numbers, it has less than 50,000 Teslas in stock, quite possibly the majority of them are rented out to Uber drivers. That means Tesla managed to deliver half of the order in just over a year and it shouldn’t have a problem completing it this year.

The deal with Tesla is unusual for another reason. When rental companies place orders with manufacturers, they get a huge discount and often a buyback guarantee - it did not happen with Tesla. According to Elon Musk, the company wasn’t interested in offering any discounts and all cars were sold at retail prices.

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