Musk says Hertz did not finalize 100,000 Tesla deal, Hertz fires back
Elon Musk announced on Monday that Tesla has not signed a contract with Hertz, despite the rental car firm’s disclosure a week ago of a significant deal with the electric car manufacturer.
Tesla shares jumped by 12.6 percent following the announcement of a massive order from Hertz of almost 100,000 vehicles on October 25, granting the CEO $36 billion in a single day as the company’s stock price soared after the deal’s declaration.
The news, which helped Tesla reach $1 trillion in market capitalization, now has been relatively debunked by the CEO himself on Twitter, disclosing that Hertz has yet to confirm the deal with the manufacturing company.
According to Musk, cars’ set prices are previously determined based on a list that determines the vehicles selling margin. The company’s share valuation proceeded to spike since the deal’s news, and Tesla’s collective stock valuation reached $1.2 trillion.
It seems that following Musk’s engineer declaration on the microblogging platform affected Tesla’s shares, resulting in a 4 percent drop in afternoon trading on Tuesday.
From their part, a Hertz spokesperson asserted last week’s revelation by stating that the electric rental vehicle company was planning to invest in “new EV charging infrastructure across the company’s global operations.”
“Deliveries of the Teslas already have started. We are seeing very strong early demand for Teslas in our rental fleet, which reflects market demand for Tesla vehicles,” Lauren Luster, Hertz’s communications director said in a statement.
Hertz’s remarkable shift from being a gas-based company to ordering a massive order of electric vehicles reveals the company’s emboldening switch in tactics with the adoption of audacious shifts, especially for a business recently coming out of bankruptcy four months ago.
Last week, the rental company’s interim Chief Executive Officer, Mark Fields, informed Reuters that future orders will comprise of Model 3 cars, seeing that each model costs $44,000, would result in a $4.4 billion for the whole deal, with orders to be delivered by the end of 2022.
The contradiction between both vehicle companies could raise some logical questions, specifically, the reason behind Musk’s announcement that the deal has not been finalized with Hertz, all while the rental firm confirmed the agreement.
As one of the wealthiest people, the SpaceX founder also made an additional $24 billion on Monday alone, augmenting his net worth to $335 billion in total.
On Sunday, the global billionaire expressed his skepticism on Twitter, challenging the United Nations (UN) by demanding solid proof that a $6 billion donation would definitively end global hunger and save 27 million people from imminent starvation.
Then, the tech mogul challenged the UN once more, by announcing that he is willing to go as far as selling Tesla stock to finalize the $6 billion donations, if, and only if, he gets sufficient proof that the amount will fix global hunger.
His skepticism was faced with an elaboration by the director of UN’ World Food Program stating that the amount would not eliminate global hunger, instead address the immediate needs of 27 million individuals who are eminently on the verge of starvation.