Rental drives the car market, which is recovering thanks (above all) to hybrids

Vehicle rental is increasingly popular with Italians, who are moving from a model anchored to car ownership to formulas based on use.

The car market is growing rental, in the face of mobility in sharing still suffering and an exponential increase in vehicle sales hybrids.Critical issues remain in Italy on the health front taxation relating to the sector - still not aligned with that of other European countries -, while i Chinese brands are set to capture a market share of at least 7 percent by 2030.The picture is outlined by the twenty-third edition of Aniasa report, the association that represents the mobility services sector within Confindustria.

Rental also encourages the spread of low-emission vehicles

Vehicle rental is becoming more and more popular among Italians.The sector now permanently represents the 30 percent of registrations, with a constantly growing share of low-emission vehicles:33 percent of new electric cars and over half of plug-in hybrids registered in our country are rentals.Among cars and light commercial vehicles, last year we reached the registration records (over 525 thousand) for a turnover of 14 billion euros.

As President Aniasa explains, Alberto Viano, in Italy “the gradual transition of the mobility of companies and individuals from a model anchored to car ownership to formulas based on use is continuing.We hope that the new incentives will be operational as soon as possible, which also see rental among the 100 percent beneficiaries and a potential interesting experiment in long-term social rental".In fact, some remain criticality lrelated to car taxation, which in our country is not aligned with that of other European nations.

Hybrid cars rise to 43 percent of total sales

More generally, the car market is in recovery by 19 percentage points compared to 2022, but we are still more than 20 points away from 2019 levels, before the crisis linked to the pandemic.In this framework, i hybrid models reached a record share of 43 percent of the total cars sold, while the full electric cars they remain stuck at 3 percent;this is a fact that in some way connects Italy to a good part of Europe:the growth curves of electric cars have flattened everywhere, especially in Germany, also due to the blocking of incentives.

Even the shared mobility is struggling to recover, albeit with signs that seem to project it into a new phase.In 2023, just under 5 million sharing car rentals were carried out, with a decrease of 10 percent compared to the previous year and almost 50 percent compared to the phase before the pandemic.On the other hand, the average duration of rentals (going from 77 to 95 minutes), a trend that seems to project the sector's offer towards multi-day or weekend-related formulas.

Chinese brands are also advancing in the European market

For the President Aniasa “the acceleration of the replacement of the national fleet can only go through a greater diffusion of pay-per-use forms of mobility.To facilitate this transition, the opportunity offered by the tax delegation law and the next budget law must be seized, to finally rebalance taxation on company cars:in Italy, companies can 'download' 3,615 euros on a car costing 30,000 euros, compared to 25 thousand in Germany, 23 thousand in Spain and 18 thousand in France and the United Kingdom".

From the association's perspective, rebalancing these values ​​at least on electric cars could provide an impact strong push to their diffusion, with around 500,000 new cars on tap in three years.Also because on this front the China is accelerating decisively:if in 2019 42 percent of the cars sold in China belonged to European brands and only 27 percent to local brands, in just 4 years the situation has completely changed overturned: European brands dropped to 32 percent, while local ones rose to 43 percent.Finally, according to the study, Chinese car manufacturers will acquire a market share of at least 7 percent in Europe by 2030.