Tip: HERTZ as we all know is one of the leading Car Rental providers in the world. From Airports to Malls, there are thousands of HERTZ outlets in all the leading cities in the world. Due to declining profits and market speculations on what will happen to the CAR RENTAL industry once DRIVER-LESS cars hit the road, the stocks of Hertz holdings have taken a lot of beating. The price has reduced nearly 75% over the past 12 months.

Apple Inc. has always been known to be the forerunner and innovator in any new vertical. From revolutionizing the way you hear music to how you use your mobile phone, they have always been the pioneers of innovation. But this time with the upcoming DRIVER-LESS cars, they are lagging behind Goolge’s WAYMO and TESLA. But this has not stopped the technology giant from proceeding. Apple Inc. has also been silently testing its Driver-less cars technology for the past couple of years ( partnering with a variety of providers ). Many have sighted Apple testing a fleet of Self-driving vehicles powered by tis technology in and around SFO. But now, they have announced this interesting partnership with the Car Rental major Hertz to test their Autonomous technology.

Apple will be leasing the Lexus RX 450h sports vehicle from Hertz ( at their Donlen fleet management unit ). When Apple announced its Car project some years ago, there were huge speculations if APPLE was getting into manufacturing cars. But Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple Inc. has made it very clear that the company will focus more on developing a fantastic technology that would power any Self-driving car than manufacturing the entire car itself. The project is called ‘Titan’ and is headed by Mr. Bob Mansfield.

Apple’s partnership with Car Rental provider Hertz is very interesting as recently Google’s Waymo has partnered with another Rental giant AVIS. This has bought some good hope in the mind’s of investors ( who were worried about the Car rental market ). The shares of Hertz spiked a whooping 13% on release of this news.

What we see is there are 2 sides to this entire Driver-less cars equation. On one side are the Car manufacturers trying to get their vehicles ready for the Autonomous revolution. On the other side are core technology companies that are using the opportunity to develop Software and algorithms required for this market. Jumping into this band wagon are also the good old Microprocessor and chip making companies like Nvidia, Intel etc. As more and more of the game un-folds we will see the raise and change of many industries.