Park Ridge, New Jersey – Car rental company Hertz has announced that it is working with Nissan to offer Leaf all-electric vehicles as rental units in the U.S. and Europe by early 2011. Under the partnership, Hertz will develop a program for the roll-out of the Nissan Leaf at select rental sites in those two major markets.
The Leaf is scheduled to go on sale in Japan, the U.S. and Europe in late 2010.
“Our partnership with Hertz is an important step towards our goal of promoting widespread acceptance of electric vehicles,” said Toshiyuki Shiga, COO of Nissan Motor Company. “Together with our Alliance partner Renault, we aim to be the leader in zero-emission vehicles, which we believe are one of the best solutions for sustaining the growing need for transport across the globe.”
In future, Hertz and Nissan plan to expand the Leaf into Hertz’s global car share service, allowing the Renault-Nissan Alliance to scale up availability and acceptance of electric vehicles across a wide consumer base in some of the world’s most densely-populated cities.