Rental car companies registered around 779,000 new cars in the first half of 2024. This is a 24% increase compared to the same period last year, indicating that the market is returning to normal, but not as many as in the first half of 2019, when 1.1 million vehicles were added to the rental fleet across Europe.
Dataforce, which collects data on rental car registrations from 20 European countries, says car rental prices are falling, another sign that the market is returning to normal.
Germany had the highest number of new rental car registrations in the first half of the year (around 190,000), followed by Spain (152,000), France (132,000), the UK (95,000) and Italy (84,000).
These big five markets account for 84% of the registrations tallied by the automotive data specialists. The other countries with the most registrations are Denmark and the Netherlands (both 17,000), Sweden (16,000), Belgium, Switzerland and Norway (all 10,000), Austria (9,000), Portugal (8,000), Poland (7,000), Finland (5,000), Iceland and the Czech Republic (both 4,000), Lithuania (3,000), Latvia and Slovakia (both 2,000).
The increase was driven by a return to stability in the supply chain, allowing OEMs to refocus on short-term rental customers: One in every 10 vehicles registered in Europe in the first half of the year was a rental car, thanks to the strong performance of the rental car industry.
Spain has the highest penetration rate of car rental among major holiday destinations, with one in four registered vehicles in the country being rented. Spain is the fifth-largest car market overall, but the second-largest rental car market after Germany.
The UK saw the largest relative increase in rental registrations, up 111% year-on-year.
Another notable change is the shrinking share of BEVs in rental registrations, falling from 6.4% in the first half of 2023 to 3.8% (just under 30,000 units in total) in the same period this year.
The lack of popularity of electric vehicles in the rental industry is due to two major factors: first, low customer demand due to unfamiliarity with driving an electric vehicle, concerns about range and charging, and doubts about whether and how to return the vehicle “fully charged”. The other major drawback is that uncertainty about residual value forces rental companies to charge relatively high prices for EV rentals, reducing both their willingness to offer EV options and customer demand for rental EVs.
The majority of rental cars registered in the first half of 2024 (57.3%) will still be petrol vehicles, followed by diesel (26.9%), mild hybrids (6.1%), plug-in hybrids (4.8%) and battery electric vehicles (3.8%).
Image: formulanone/Flickr – CC BY-SA 2.0
