Avis to manage Waymo’s self-driving Phoenix fleet

One of the nation’s biggest rental-car companies will be supporting Alphabet’s latest venture into self-driving cars, the two firms said Monday.

Avis Budget Group, the company that owns the Avis, Budget and Zipcar brands, has signed a deal to help maintain Alphabet’s self-driving car fleet in Phoenix, which began serving members of the public in April.

The pilot program in Arizona has been picking up passengers and dropping them off as part of an experiment tinkering with the future of transportation. Waymo’s test is an effort to understand where regular people want to go with self-driving cars, and how they interact with them. It’s similar to the one Uber launched in Pittsburgh last year involving the company’s own self-driving cars.

Under the terms of Monday’s deal, Avis Budget Group is expected to care for Waymo’s fleet of Chrysler Pacifica minivans and other vehicles forming the backbone of Alphabet’s planned 600-vehicle fleet in Phoenix. Avis will clean the cars, as well as perform regular maintenance such as oil changes, tire rotations and installing ordinary replacement parts.

“This partnership will allow Avis Budget Group to service Waymo’s growing number of cars on the road, ensuring Waymo’s self-driving vehicles are ready for riders around the clock,” the two companies said in a statement.

The maintenance deal does not appear to extend to the actual rental of self-driving cars; riders who wish to use Waymo’s vehicles currently must apply for permission to participate in the company’s early rider program. Still, the deal highlights the way that rental companies, with their nationwide scale and experience maintaining vehicle fleets, could become key players in the spread of self-driving technology.

In an agreement that echoes the larger deal between Alphabet and Avis, Apple is leasing a small fleet of cars

from Hertz Global Holdings to test self-driving technology.

The iPhone maker is leasing Lexus RX450h sport utility vehicles from Hertz’s Donlen fleet-management unit, according to documents released recently by the California Department of Motor Vehicles. When Apple received its license to test three autonomous vehicles from the state’s DMV in April, the documents listed Donlen as the lessor and Apple as the lessee.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment, while a representative for Hertz didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday. A half-dozen vehicles have been testing Apple’s autonomous technology on public roads in and around the San Francisco Bay Area for at least a year, a person familiar with Apple’s project told Bloomberg earlier this year.

Hertz stock has dropped by more than 75 percent over the past 12 months amid falling revenue and profit, and investor concern about the role rental companies will play in an automotive industry where selfdriving cars and ridehailing play a greater role. The shares pared some of those losses Monday after Alphabet’s Waymo unit tapped Avis to manage its fleet of autonomous vehicles in Phoenix.