Hertz customers in select cities nationwide will soon have the opportunity to rent a Polestar 2. The EV automaker announced Thursday that it has delivered the first batch of some 65,000 vehicles to the Rental corporation as part of a deal struck between the two in April.
“Our partnership with Hertz is an exciting milestone that provides the opportunity for a significant number of potential new customers to experience an EV for the first time, and it will be in a Polestar,” Thomas Ingenlath, Polestar CEO, said in a prepared statement. “With over 55,000 Polestar cars already on the road across our 25 live markets there is no doubt that our brand is growing at an incredible pace.”
Polestar is quick to point out that this deal is one of the largest single EV purchases in history, a not so subtle dig at rival Tesla which, last October, supposedly had its own deal with Hertz for a whopping 100,000 Model 3s. However, that agreement failed to get beyond Hertz' press release as Tesla CEO Elon Musk subsequently tweeted that "no contract has been signed yet" and the whole deal fizzled from there.
In addition to the Polestar 2s, Hertz will also be acquiring a select number of Polestar 1s, giving its customers a hybrid option to choose from as well. As a Polestar rep told Engadget, the metro areas of "Seattle, LA, Burbank and Orange County CA, San Diego, Phoenix/Scottsdale, Miami, Islip NY, and Newark NJ" will all be among the first to receive the new EVs.