Tesla vehicles are increasing Hertz’s customer satisfaction, still adding more EVs to the fleet

Tesla vehicles are increasing Hertz’s customer satisfaction as the company gets better use of electric vehicles. The rental car company is also adding more EVs to its fleet.

Last year, Hertz announced an important effort to electrify its fleet of rental cars, led by a massive purchase of 100,000 Tesla Model 3 vehicles. More recently, the company added Model Y vehicles to the order.

The rental car company said that it expects to have all 100,000 Tesla vehicles by the end of 2022 – though Tesla didn’t seem to be completely on board with that timeline.

In April, Hertz announced that it is also adding up to 65,000 electric vehicles from Polestar to its fleet over the next five years.

During its Q2 2022 earnings, Hertz released some updates about its growing Tesla fleet.

Hertz CEO Stephen Scherr confirmed that it is still taking delivery of Tesla vehicles and it continues to do so:

First of all, we continue to take delivery of Teslas and we will continue to do that, number one.

Scherr said that it is getting repeat customers from its Tesla fleet:

The first lot we took from Tesla relative to the most recent lot we took have moved materially faster. We’ve learned how to move those cars, where we want those cars to be. And equally, I think we have schooled our customers on how to use them, so much so that I think there’s an embedded tether there, which is people have learned how to use the card. They’re coming back to use the car and rent car more frequently. And I think all of those are expressions of the first mover edge that we have around EVs.

The CEO confirmed that it has rented Tesla vehicles for 160,000 days already, and customers renting Tesla vehicles from Hertz are rating them much higher than if they rent other vehicles from them.

Scherr added:

With respect to electric vehicles in our airport and off-airport fleet, we’ve recorded over 160,000 transaction days using Tesla cars, booked at premium rates that are typically $30 to $35 in excess of comparable average rates. Customers are enjoying the Tesla EV experience, which is being expressed in NPS scores that are 10 points higher than our global average. We are continuing to expand the electric vehicle offering through the regular delivery of Tesla cars and now Polestars.

NPS stands for “Net promoter score,” and it is used to rate the likelihood that customers would recommend a company – often a good metric for customer satisfaction.

Hertz is really liking its move to electric vehicles, and Scherr said that we should expect them to announce more large purchases of electric vehicles in the near future.