Rental car company Hertz announced plans to purchase up to 65,000 electric vehicles from Polestar, a sub-brand of Volvo and its Chinese parent company Geely. The announcement follows a similar move by Hertz to purchase 100,000 Tesla vehicles in a bid to electrify its global fleet.

The new vehicles will be acquired over a period of five years. The Polestar vehicles will available in Europe in spring 2022 and in North America and Australia in late 2022. Neither company disclosed the financial terms of the deal, but the EV maker's Polestar 2 sedan starts at $49,000, making the deal worth around $3.18 billion if Hertz pays full price for the vehicles.

Hertz reported having around 500,000 vehicles in its global fleet last year. The rental car company escaped bankruptcy last year after the pandemic, and an unsustainable amount of debt nearly devastated its business. The company, which is more than a hundred years old, was eventually refinanced to the tune of $5.9 billion by investors led by Knighthead Capital Management and Certares Management.