In a country that loves moving by car more than ever (73% in 2021 versus 69% in 2020), given that the pandemic does not seem to have shifted the balance, on the contrary, the rental industry would be a candidate to democratize a market in which The logic of the margins concentrated on premium models keeps many Italians away from buying a new and less polluting car. The circulating fleet is getting older: the average age has gone from 8.8 to 11.5 years from 2000 to today. Registrations have fallen by 27% since the beginning of the year. Except that the government’s choices regarding incentives, from which the rental is excluded, and VAT deductibility (stopped at 40% since 2007 against 60-100% in Europe) clearly contrast the renters’ plans. A sector with strong fleets in which clean cars prevail (over all plug-in hybrids) could make an important contribution to the difficult path of the energy transition.
The Aniasa report
The picture emerges from the presentation of the 21st edition of the Aniasa Report, the Association that represents the mobility services sector within Confindustria, and from the research “The mobility that does not change”, signed by Bain & Company. The pandemic, the car chip crisis and, most recently, the conflict in Ukraine have slowed down rental and sharing mobility in our country. Compared to 2019, over 106 thousand registrations have been lost for a total value of 2.6 billion euros. New cars went from 482,000 units in 2019 (including commercial vehicles) to 376,000 in 2021. Despite the contraction, the sector has confirmed itself as the protagonist of the ecological transition by registering 47% of plug-in hybrid cars and 30% of electric cars .
Short-term rental and car sharing the most affected
Short-term rental and car sharing (but with + 50% in the first quarter) remain the most affected sectors. The long-term rental holds up the brunt also thanks to the boom of individuals with only a tax code, which have now reached 100 thousand. The rental vehicle fleet remains stable over 1 million units and the sector confirms itself as a strategic lever for the decarbonisation of Italian mobility. But the substance remains the same, according to Aniasa: to achieve the European objectives set by the FIT for 55, Italy has no alternative to aligning the company car taxation to the average of European countries.
Viano (Aniasa): “Company cars excluded from incentives”
“Our country is called upon to make the expected ecological transition of mobility in the coming years – declared the president of Aniasa, Alberto Viano -. Precisely for this reason, the exclusion of company and rental cars from the incentives put in place by the Government this spring is extremely perplexing. The rental, data in hand, is the main tool capable of facilitating this transition of the vehicle fleet and accelerating the replacement of the most polluting vehicles ».