Driving Change In The Car Rental Industry

Boston, MA – January 11: A sign at Logan Airport points the way to rental car services. (Photo by David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

Boston Globe via Getty Images

The next time you get in an Uber, you might actually be in a Hertz rental car. It part of the disruption of the industry. “We have a pretty robust portion of our business in which for quite some time we have a program where we rent cars to Uber drivers,” Page Motes, Chief Compliance and Sustainability Officer told me in an exclusive interview. “So Uber drivers that may not own their own car, or maybe they don’t want to use their own personal car, they want to put the miles on a different car, and that program allows them to rent a car,” she explained on Electric Ladies Podcast, adding that Hertz pays for the insurance and maintenance on vehicles the Uber drivers rent. They also hold ride and drive events for Uber and Lyft drivers in certain cities to try them out.

The dramatic expansion of ride-sharing is one of the market dynamics that drove Hertz to reinvent its business strategy. The pandemic shutdown forced Hertz and some of the approximately 3,000 other car rental companies in the U.S. to rethink their business models. It even caused Hertz to file for bankruptcy, which it emerged from in 2021.

In addition to the rise of booking platforms, the increase in corporate sustainable travel policies are also driving innovation in the car rental industry. In June 2025, the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) Foundation, issued their Sustainable Business Travel Transition Pathway, developed in collaboration with Accenture.

“Business travel is a $1.48 trillion industry, playing a critical role in the global economy,” the press release announcing it explained. “However, it also contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, making it a key focus area for corporate sustainability efforts. As regulations change and companies commit to emissions reduction goals, integrating sustainability into business travel is no longer optional – it’s a necessity,” the release added.

The U.S. is over 40% of the car rental market; an estimated 48+ billion Americans rented a car in 2022, for example, and it’s growing exponentially.

Responding to changing market and technology demands – including electric vehicles

As consumers and corporate travel policies demand vehicles with a lower carbon footprint, rental car companies are adding fleets of electric vehicles, and more.

Hertz offers training on how to use the EV, Motes said, to increase customer’s comfort levels and make it easier for drivers. The training includes short videos both before and when they pick up the car, which include where to find charging that’s most convenient to them and the nuances of EVs. EVs are much quieter than regular gas-powered vehicles, for example, which can confuse some drivers.

Motes said they are seeing certain markets where EVs are most in demand, such as Atlanta and Denver.

“Our sales teams that work with our corporate accounts have active conversations with those corporations around, where’s your goal?,” Motes explained. Hertz also gives the corporate buyer teams tools to help communicate to their own people about using EVs and reports the emissions that company saved from their people renting EVs for their own reporting.

Cooperating with competitors to reduce the industry’s environmental impact

Car rental companies are collaborating on an industry sustainability procurement standard, Motes said, adding that she sits on GBTA’s Sustainability Leadership Council that’s developing it. “We actually voluntarily worked with our competitors, so Enterprise, Avis and us, I think Sixt was a part of it for a bit. We created a procurement standard that we all agree are the right questions to ask a ground transportation organization.”

“I thought that was an incredible way for us to say, as an industry, we’re not arguing about what the right data points are,” she added, “We want to give you an apples-to-apples opportunity to ask us the same questions and then you decide who you want to do business with. But I love that we’re a part of that as a collective in the industry.”

Maybe they can collectively address the huge amounts of water the industry uses too. A typical professional car wash uses between 30-40 gallons per vehicle per wash, MMCG Invest found in their analysis. Motes pointed to innovations in the car wash space that look promising: “There’s a lot of interesting innovation that’s happening in the car wash space, and we want to continue to scale those.” They include reclaiming the water used in car washes. “How do you repurpose that water, especially in water scarce locations?” She pointed out a new steam cleaning technology for both the exterior and the interior of the vehicle that launched in Europe that she said “uses 90% less water,” and sterilizes the car more effectively.

Handling ESG pushback

Motes insisted that any pushback related to sustainability and ESG – environment, social and governance policies – is not deterring Hertz. Customers are demanding more low carbon and environmentally sound options and tracking, so they are listening to them.

“Regardless of what’s happening with kind of the ESG backlash conversation here, especially in the US, our other jurisdictions are coming hard and fast on regulatory. And I literally can’t stop. I literally can’t slow down,” she said, referring to the California’s new climate laws, for example, and those in the European Union and Australia. “I have to do that no matter what. It doesn’t matter what’s happening in the broader ESG backlash.”

“The other piece is, our corporate customers that have their own set of goals and expectations have absolutely not led up on us on wanting to see us continue to progress and move forward and drive change and help them drive change, because that is their expectation of us as a large scale supplier.”

Human trafficking

Fighting human trafficking is a travel industry priority that GBTA also offers training in. Motes said they do extensive training for employees that interface with the public in any way, “As part of our (Hertz’) human rights program, we do truly believe that human trafficking is one of our salient risks, and we have a responsibility in the travel industry to be a part of the solution and address the problem.” They train on potential warning signs and what to do and not do as prescribed by law enforcement and government sources. “We find it incredibly important. We know that we have partners in the travel industry, (on this) and our desire is to lock arms with others across the travel industry to do this as a collective, along with the airports end to end,” she added.