Rental car platform Hertz to buy up to 65,000 electric vehicles from Polestar

Rental car platform Hertz Global Holdings will buy up to 65,000 electric vehicles over five years from Swedish EV maker Polestar in its efforts to switch to zero-emission models. The company will start offering rides in Polestar cars from the beginning this spring in Europe and later in 2022 in North America and Australia. The Florida-based rental car company will initially order the Polestar 2 sedan.

In October last year, Hertz had announced its order to purchase 100,000 electric cars from Tesla Inc, primarily the EV maker's Model 3. In March, it had informed that it will add Tesla's mid-size SUV Model Y to its electric vehicle fleet, according to the car rental firm's website.

Polestar, which is a part of China's Geely and Volvo Cars, believes that The Hertz partnership "will bring the amazing experience of driving an electric car to a wider audience, satisfying a broad variety of our mutual customers' short- and longer-term mobility requirements," Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath said in a statement.

The Polestar 2 comes with a large battery pack in the form of a small platform housed in the floor, fully recessed and isolated. This necessarily makes maintenance more complex when changing batteries, but the safety advantage is great.

The electric sedan gets Pixel LED headlights, fitted as standard in the 'Launch Edition', featuring active high beam technology. There is also a ‘welcome sequence’ that activates when the vehicle is unlocked. Over at the rear, the signature lighting features 288 LEDs in a full-width wrap-around light bar, featuring unique welcome and farewell lighting sequences. The rear light bar includes adaptive lighting technology.

During daytime, the brightness of the rear light is increased to ensure optimal visibility of the signature while at the night time, these LEDs automatically dim to prevent drivers behind from being dazzled.