Hertz is not a company known for mastering technology.
After all, it was just a few years ago that dozens of former customers accused the car rental agency of ordering them to be wrongly arrested, blaming a reported computer glitch that incorrectly marked legitimate vehicle rentals as stolen. Following some ugly incidents resulting in the incarceration of some customers, Hertz settled dozens of cases out of court.
Here we are just 3 years later, and Hertz is rolling out a new way to rely on computers to determine which customers need to be accused of damaging cars.
What could go wrong?
New AI damage scanners being installed nationwide
Car and Driver reports that Hertz has entered into a partnership reportedly worth tens of millions of dollars with UVeye, an Israel-based company that builds automatic vehicle inspection units.
Cars are driven through a ring of cameras and sensors. The system takes about 20 seconds to compare findings to previous scans and issue a meticulous report.
The invention was originally intended to scan vehicles for threats like bombs and guns, but UVeye also markets the technology to the automotive industry to detect damage or other mechanical deviations.
"The technology uses cameras and machine learning algorithms to comb over the vehicle's body, glass, tires, and undercarriage for damage and maintenance issues," Car and Driver explains.
By the end of 2025, Hertz, which also owns Thrifty and Dollar, intends to install these scanners at 100 of its roughly 1,600 airport locations across the United States.
No scratch or ding will go unnoticed, even on the undercarriage or in the form of a hairline window crack your own eyeballs can't see.
The technology doesn't just deliver diagnostics to the rental car maintenance team, though—the data is being deployed against customers, too.
Customers already complaining about automation
So far, the system is proving to be far more strict and unforgiving than traditional post-rental inspections by human eyes.
According to an account at TheDrive.com, the new Hertz scanner system at the Atlanta airport automatically served one customer with a $440 bill ($250 for the repair, $125 for processing, and another $65 administrative fee) for what amounted to "curb rash on one wheel." That's a slight scuff on the driver's side rear wheel—the sort that sometimes happens during normal parallel parking.
Hertz's automated message to the customer offered a $52 discount if they agreed to accept responsibility and pay within 2 days, or a $32.50 discount for admitting guilt and paying within a week.
But if the customer needs to dispute the damage, ask for images of the car, or even ask clarifying questions, Hertz's digital appeal system takes up to 10 days to reply, The Drive found, making the early action discount impossible to satisfy.
The customer reported that the bill did not offer a way to speak to a live customer service agent about the damage.
The Drive asked Hertz to explain what's going on, but the company would only issue this overview statement: "The vast majority of rentals are incident-free. When damage does occur, our goal is to enhance the rental experience by bringing greater transparency, precision, and speed to the process. Digital vehicle inspections help deliver on that with clear, detailed documentation that is delivered more quickly, as well as a more technology-enabled resolution process."
If you rent a car from Hertz or Thrifty, it remains important to take thorough photos of your rental car before driving it off the lot—down to the scuffs on the rubber of the tires, apparently. Not that doing so will necessarily save you from an AI device flagging you for invisible flaws or normal wear and tear.
One thing that's clear: Hertz needs money. Last year, the company posted a loss of $2.9 billion, a loss largely connected to the company's failure to invest wisely in another form of emerging tech, electric vehicles. Last month, the company endured its sixth consecutive losing quarter, bleeding another $443 million.
If this use of technology sounds merciless and bureaucratic to you, we wish we could say that you can simply avoid Hertz and its corporate siblings, Thrifty and Dollar. But Avis and Enterprise—Hertz's biggest U.S. competitors—are also reportedly considering adding these AI scanners to lots.
We don't need AI to tell us that systems like this won't do much to mend rental companies' tattered relationship with customers.