Hertz Isn’t Just a Rental Car Company Anymore

Gil West, CEO of Hertz, joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss the launch of Oro Mobility and how a century of fleet operations is helping robotaxis to scale.

A robotaxi parked is a depreciating asset, and the attention goes to the driving while the margin hides everywhere else. Cleaning, charging, maintaining, and positioning the vehicle is the part nobody wants and the part that decides the economics.

Oro Mobility was built to own that work. It is an asset-heavy operating company sitting on Hertz infrastructure, 2,700 chargers, more than 11,000 service locations, and a footprint across roughly 160 countries. Oro owns and operates fleets, human-driven and autonomous, and supplies them turnkey to B2B partners including Uber and Nuro in a manner that Gil frames as the connective tissue between the demand aggregators, the technology companies, and the OEMs, the supply layer for the future of mobility.

That positioning reshapes how the autonomy economy scales. A robotaxi company no longer has to build depots, charging, and a service network from scratch, something Mr. West says could take decades and billions of dollars to replicate.

Over time, Hertz plans to hold robotaxis on its balance sheet as both owner and operator, sweat each asset through the peaks, service it through the valleys, and run the same footprint across rideshare, delivery, and autonomy.

Episode Chapters

• 00:00 Hertz’s Turnaround
• 1:18 Oro Mobility
• 4:43 Hertz’s Infrastructure Advantage
• 13:29 Robotaxi Technicians
• 15:36 Robotaxis and Rideshare are Complementary
• 19:27 Infrastructure Permitting
• 22:26 Peaks and Valleys of Assets Ownership
• 25:47 Inspiration for Oro Mobility
• 28:28 Hertz as a Platform Business
• 30:28 Managing the Turnaround
• 34:21 Defining Success for Oro Mobility
• 35:22 Hertz Over the Next Century
• 37:03 AUTNMY AI