Elon Musk Tweets that Hertz's 100,000 EV Order Isn't Final Yet

Last week, Hertz announced that it placed an order with Tesla for 100,000 electric vehicles to add to its rental car fleet, but Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk tweeted this week that the deal isn't actually finalized yet.

The announcement of the order sent shares of Tesla soaring, helping propel it to become part of the small club of publicly traded companies with $1 trillion in market capitalization.

And even though the announcement helped make Musk $36 billion richer in a single day, Musk's tweet appears to contradict Hertz's statement.

You’re welcome!

If any of this is based on Hertz, I’d like to emphasize that no contract has been signed yet.

Tesla has far more demand than production, therefore we will only sell cars to Hertz for the same margin as to consumers.

Hertz deal has zero effect on our economics.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 2, 2021

As Gizmodo points out though, if you go back and read Hertz's statement, you can see that the company did imply that the deal wasn't as final as it appeared and many stockholders likely assumed:

As consumer interest in electric vehicles (EV) skyrockets, Hertz today is announcing a significant investment to offer the largest EV rental fleet in North America and one of the largest in the world. This includes an initial order of 100,000 Teslas by the end of 2022 and new EV charging infrastructure across the company’s global operations.

Hertz never actually said it had ordered the Teslas, just that an initial order for them by the end of 2022 was part of its plan going forward.

Hertz did tell Gizmodo though that an order had been placed and that electric cars were already being delivered.

“As we announced last week, Hertz has made an initial order of 100,000 Tesla electric vehicles and is investing in new EV charging infrastructure across the company’s global operations,” a Hertz spokesperson told Gizmodo.

“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."

So it's not at all clear what is actually happening here, but given Musk's mercurial nature when it comes to his Twitter account, it might be best to go with official company statements that have been vetted by legal teams.