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
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