Hertz and General Motors announced Monday that the rental-car giant plans to order up to 175,000 electric vehicles from GM over five years. 

Deliveries of the EVs are expected to start in the first quarter of 2023 with the Chevrolet Bolt EV and EUV, and will continue through 2027 with vehicles from the Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, Cadillac, and BrightDrop brands.

GMC Hummer EV at Pilot travel center

GMC Hummer EV at Pilot travel center

The pace of these deliveries, not yet bound by any contract, is expected to pick up as GM scales up EV production between 2023 and 2025, on the way to a goal of a million EVs annually for North America by 2025. 

The companies claim that the plan will make available EVs spanning a wide range of categories, sizes, and price points, and it’s said to be the largest expansion of EVs so far among fleet customers. 

Hertz says that rental customers might travel more than 8 billion miles with these vehicles, saving about 1.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide versus similar gasoline-powered vehicles. 

The rental company is aiming to make a quarter of its rental fleet electric by the end of 2024, and it says it offers “tens of thousands of EVs available for rent at 500 Hertz locations across 38 states.”

Tesla at Hertz

Tesla at Hertz

Hertz announced last October that it planned to add 100,000 Tesla vehicles to its fleets in North America and Europe by the end of 2022. It also plans to add up to 65,000 Polestar EVs over five years, starting with models added earlier this year for Europe and in late 2022 for the U.S. and Australia. Hertz is also offering a program that allows the rental of the Tesla Model 3 to Uber drivers at $299 or less a month including insurance. 

Neither the rental-car company nor GM provided additional information on how this massive fleet of EVs in regular use might be charged, and Hertz hasn't yet discussed the what or where of availability. GM in July revealed plans for a network of up to 500 DC fast-charging stations to be added to Pilot and Flying J travel centers across the country, in a collaboration with EVgo. It will take a much larger build-out of fast-chargers to keep up with the needs of potentially thousands of daily EV renters around big-city airports.