The American company Hertz, one of the world’s largest car rental operators, recently almost became history. In the spring of 2020, she launched the procedure bankruptcy: The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic practically froze the business and left the company with huge debts. But it worked out. In June 2021, it announced its exit from bankruptcy: Capital Management and Certares Opportunities invested $5.9 billion, and in addition, Hertz received access to loans, lines of credit and other debt repayment instruments in the amount of almost $10 billion.
In the fall of 2021, Hertz launched an ambitious project to convert its fleet to electric vehicles. In October, a deal was announced with Tesla to buy 100,000 cars by the end of 2022. The $4.2 billion contract was the largest in the electric vehicle market, although it stalled. But Hertz has already prepared a “backup plan”: a deal has been concluded with the Swedish-Chinese company Polestar to buy 65,000 electric vehicles over the next five years.
In the business sphere, this contract is estimated at about $3 billion. Deliveries of electric vehicles Polestar 2 European fleets of Hertz will begin this spring, units in North America and Australia will start receiving machines by the end of the year. At first, electric vehicles will be available only to the company’s business partners, later they will be issued to private customers. Hertz intends to become the largest electric vehicle operator in America and one of the largest in the world.