Hertz car rental gives keys to AI fleet management system in 160 countries

Hertz has deployed an AI-powered fleet management system called Hertz Connected Fleet OS, built on Palantir Foundry and Palantir AIP, to streamline operations across its 500,000-vehicle fleet and 11,000 locations. The system orchestrates vehicle turnaround, workforce allocation, and customer matching to ensure “the right car, at the right place, at the right time” for the global rental company’s operations in 160 countries.

How it works: The AI system replaces Hertz’s historically low-tech operations that relied on two-way radios and manual coordination across vehicle processing stages.

• Employees use a lightweight Android app to log their progress through each stage of vehicle processing—from intake and maintenance to cleaning and final staging.
• AI monitors real-time activity and provides recommendations to smooth bottlenecks, such as suggesting workforce reallocation during weather delays or automatically sending overtime requests to employees’ devices.
• The system can predict surge patterns, like anticipating delayed returns due to flight disruptions in Atlanta, and proactively adjust staffing from front desk operations to returns processing.

What they’re saying: Former EVP and CIO Tim Langley-Hawthorne emphasized the system’s customer-focused mission at Palantir’s AIPC conference last month.

• “This is all around our purpose for our customers, which is making sure we have the right car, at the right place, at the right time,” he said. “It orchestrates customers, vehicles, and workforce. Those are the three critical components for businesses like ours on the ground.”
• “Historically, this operation was run on two-way radios and dispatchers,” Langley-Hawthorne explained. “It was run on people running around the lots, talking to people.”

The strategic approach: Rather than perfecting data architecture first, Hertz focused on high-impact areas where AI could immediately drive business value.

• “The trick for us was don’t try to perfect all of it,” Langley-Hawthorne told CIO.com. “Narrow it into the areas where we think using tools like Foundry will drive the most value and get that piece.”
• The company funded the initiative by retiring legacy data lakes and technologies, reinvesting those savings into data governance without requesting additional budget.
• “Every technology leader before me in the last 10 years started something but never finished,” he noted, explaining why the company lacked a reference data architecture when he joined in November 2021.

Key capabilities: The AI system addresses multiple operational challenges across Hertz’s complex logistics network.

• Vehicle turnaround efficiency improvements through real-time process monitoring and bottleneck identification.
• Predictive workforce allocation across field locations based on anticipated demand patterns.
• Maintenance expense reduction through optimized scheduling and resource allocation.
• Enhanced customer matching to pair the best available vehicles with customer preferences.