ROME – The pandemic and lockdowns have temporarily slowed the advance of rental and sharing mobility in our country. The economic crisis, the widespread use of teleworking and the blocking of tourist flows have halved short-term rentals and shared car journeys. Long-term leasing has withstood the impact, mainly by extending existing contracts and significantly reducing new registrations. The rental vehicle fleet remains steady above 1 million and is expected to grow again in the coming months. The PNRR has practically ignored the automotive sector, but today concrete measures are needed to accelerate the renewal of the national fleet. New and used Euro6, hybrid or electric vehicles from rental can help reduce the ‘green divide’ in our country, accelerating the replacement of the 11 million vehicles with over 15 years of service.
This is the scenario that emerges from the presentation of the 20th edition of the Aniasa Report, the association that represents the mobility services sector within Confindustria.
Vehicle rental in 2020
The crisis in demand induced by the pandemic and the repetition of lockdowns and closures between regions has hit car rental hard. After seven years of continuous records in registrations and turnover, which led it to represent 25% of the automotive market, 2020 marked a sharp slowdown. It went from 520,000 registrations in 2019 (cars and commercial vehicles) to 355,000 last year, with a decrease of 32%. The pandemic has had a diversified impact on the different businesses of pay-per-use mobility: short-term rental and sharing activities have collapsed, the long-term has well maintained.
The collapse of the short term. Without tourism a terrible year
The short term was heavily penalized by the substantial disappearance of travel activities and in particular of international tourism; the national one, partially reactivated in the short summer period, and the substantial stability of commercial vehicle rentals (thanks to the boom in e-commerce and home deliveries) did not compensate for the heavy losses. The 52% drop in turnover and the number of rentals decreased by 60% compared to 2019 are the mirror of the airport crisis which saw a 72% reduction in traffic. Rent-a-car operators estimate a return to pre-pandemic levels only in 2023.
Car sharing stopped by city mobility restrictions and teleworking
Car sharing has also suffered a severe backlash. Due to the sharp reduction in city mobility and the consistent use of teleworking, the shared car has seen its rental halves (from 13 to 6 million), with a consequent reduction in the fleet of vehicles available by 27%. The operators are reshaping the structure of the offer, responding to the needs for greater security felt by customers.
The “slowed” growth of long-term rental
Long-term rental, thanks to the partial greater stability of its business based mainly on multi-year contracts, did not immediately suffer significant repercussions on the revenue side (turnover: + 2% in 2020), however recording an increase in bad credit and a general tendency towards extensions of existing contracts which resulted in a significant reduction in registrations of 25%. The fleet in circulation has nevertheless further grown, reaching 933 thousand vehicles (65 thousand of which are hired by private customers). In this specific sector, the prevalence of choice for long-term rental has been made on electric or hybrid vehicles, so much so that now the fleet of cars and commercial vehicles that circulate on our streets with this formula has exceeded half of the total number of cars. circulating.
The first quarter of 2021: stable trend awaiting the exit from the tunnel
In the first quarter of the current year, the performance of the three sectors was confirmed in line with 2020: the short term with over -60% of rentals (vs 2019), -67% of registrations and a fleet stopped at 73 thousand vehicles; long-term turnover has grown compared to the pre-pandemic, with a fleet increased by 7% and registrations only slightly down (-1%); car sharing recorded -50% of rentals compared to 2019.
Another tile has recently hit the sector, in particular on short-term rental: the car chip crisis. A phenomenon that has reduced the flow of new cars added to the fleet for the summer and that forces those who are still planning their holidays to book in time the cars they need to reach the holiday resorts, thus ensuring the availability of the vehicle. with greater difficulty due to the general uncertainty about the feasibility of holiday periods.
“The pandemic has confirmed the centrality of the car in the national mobility and transport system”, declares the President of ANIASA, Massimiliano Archiapatti. “Yet, the four wheels have inexplicably remained out of the investments envisaged by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. To support the expected ecological transition, it is time to definitively abandon the ideological approach to mobility and introduce effective measures to concretely accelerate the renewal of our national fleet (38 million vehicles), the second oldest on the continent, with over 30 % of working capital before Euro4 (over 15 years of seniority). It is necessary to reach the population groups with lower spending capacity, who often travel in these more polluting and less safe vehicles and incentivize them to replace them with the latest generation cars. This is why we have made our proposal to the Government to extend the eco-bonus to the purchase of used Euro6, hybrid and electric cars following the scrapping of Euro 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4 vehicles. A measure that would produce immediate benefits on demand. of mobility, thanks to accessible vehicles at lower prices than new, on the environment and, last but not least, on the safety of our roads “.
“We also hope”, Archiapatti concluded, “that the Government, in the next Budget Law, finally wants to heal a situation that has now become paradoxical for our country: the strong disparity in tax treatment on mobility costs that Italian companies experience every day on the own skin compared to European competitors “. A serious misalignment, less competitiveness especially for exports. On an average company car (value 30,000 euros) the total amount of tax deductions and deductions in Italy amounts to 5,778 euros, less than a fifth than the German and Spanish companies and about a quarter of France and Great Britain can ‘unload’. The recovery of this gap, which exceeds 400%, would allow a greater diffusion of the company car, which with its faster turn -over would contribute to reducing the average age of the fleet “.
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