Uber’s upcoming luxury robotaxi initiative in partnership with Lucid Motors and Nuro is gaining a fourth collaborator: Hertz.

The firms declared on Thursday that Hertz will manage “daily vehicle asset operations, encompassing charging, upkeep, repairs, sanitation, and depot personnel.” The service, revealed last year, is expected to debut by the close of 2026 in the San Francisco Bay Area, utilizing Lucid’s Gravity SUVs alongside Nuro’s autonomous technology.

Hertz is overseeing these responsibilities through a newly formed subsidiary named Oro Mobility, which the rental business claims will “offer integrated fleet management services across a variety of mobility sectors.”

“As the sector shifts from privately owned vehicles to commercially operated driver-assisted and autonomous fleets, Oro seeks to address a significant orchestration and operations void,” the Hertz press statement indicates.

This isn’t Hertz’s initial foray into new mobility trends, as the company underwent a bankruptcy restructuring in 2020.

In 2021, the firm made headlines by announcing its acquisition of 100,000 EVs from Tesla, a move that contributed to Elon Musk’s automaker achieving a $1 trillion valuation for the first time (and aided Hertz’s recovery image post-bankruptcy). Hertz also disclosed plans in 2022 to procure up to 175,000 EVs from General Motors, along with another 65,000 from Polestar.

However, none of those agreements were fully executed, and Hertz initiated a fire sale of the EVs it had acquired in early 2024. This decision was partly due to unexpectedly high maintenance costs from Uber drivers renting the EVs, in addition to Tesla reducing prices to combat competition and enhance sales.

Establishing a fleet management and operations division should align more closely with Hertz’s core strengths as a car rental behemoth. Rivals like Avis are already engaging in similar operations for Waymo. With robotaxi ventures appearing eager to utilize third parties for managing this aspect, Hertz has the potential to create a profitable business with Oro.

In this context, Hertz and Uber announced on Thursday that they will “investigate expansion possibilities in 2027.” Uber has partnerships with numerous autonomous vehicle firms globally and plans to order at least 35,000 robotaxi-ready vehicles from Lucid Motors in the forthcoming years. It is starting with 10,000 Gravity SUVs and has recently expressed intentions to acquire another 25,000 EVs from Lucid Motors based on its forthcoming mid-sized platform. (Uber also currently holds over 11% of Lucid Motors due to investments made alongside the vehicle orders.)