Hyundai rents a Tesla Model 3 using a car-sharing platform. Here's why

It's not very usual to hear of an automaker renting another OEM's car on a car-sharing platform. Rather they simply buy a car. However, Hyundai seems to have done that, as it used a car-sharing marketplace called Turo to rent a Tesla Model 3 for benchmarking its Ioniq 6 EV. It was not official, but the Model 3's owner spotted unusual activities through the official Tesla app, which led to this interesting finding.

It comes as a hard-to-believe fact that a major car brand like Hyundai, with virtually unlimited resources at its disposal, would rent a Tesla Model 3. However, the car owner claims that he has proof that was the real case. Teslarati spotted a series of tweets by a user who talked about his strange rental experience with his Tesla Model 3 LR with FSD.

The user claimed that a customer rented his car for a week to drive locally. Everything seemed normal until the Tesla Model 3 owner started getting notifications from the car through the app that all the doors were left open for several days. This triggered the owner's curiosity, so he accessed the Model 3's live cam to see what was happening. The photos showed the car was parked in an indoor office with Hyundai posters on the walls. After checking out all the vehicle's cameras, the Tesla owner contacted the man who had the car and learned that he was a Hyundai employee.

The man who rented the EV allegedly admitted that the Tesla Model 3 was used for benchmarking purposes. More specifically, when the car was returned in the same condition that it was rented out in, the owner asked him why the EV was sitting with the doors and trunks open for long periods of time, and his answer was 'training' at Hyundai. The Tesla owner insisted on the questions, and the alleged Hyundai employee told him the Model 3 was used for research and training purposes for benchmarking against the Ioniq 6 before its release.

The South Korean automaker admits that it conducts benchmarking on an ongoing basis, which suggests the automaker sees nothing wrong with renting a Tesla Model 3 on Turo to benchmark it against the Ioniq 6. Interestingly, while renting a car instead of completely purchasing it for benchmarking, Hyundai actually saved a lot of money, but that seems funny considering the amount of resources it has at its disposal.