Car rental, registrations at 30% in 2025

The car market for private individuals is declining, while short- and long-term car hire is growing. This is the picture taken by Aniasa, the association that represents the pay-per-use mobility sector in Confindustria, and the market analysis company Dataforce. Of the total 2025 registrations, rental reached 30.6% with a total of approximately 525,000 registrations, over 50,000 more than in 2024 (+10.73%). The result is linked to passenger car registrations (+13.3%), with a positive result in both the 'long-term' (+11.6%) and 'short-term' (+19.25%) segments. On the other hand, there were some difficulties for the light commercial vehicles segment (-3.34%): -1.34% for 'long-term' and -16.1% for 'short-term'. Compared to the first half of 2025, long-term car rental maintained a constant growth result, while in the light commercial vehicles (LCV) segment, the negative result was almost reduced to zero (from -14.21% to -1.34%), just as the negative result, again for LCV, was almost halved in the short-term rental segment (the liability fell from -29.85% to -16.1%). On the car side, short-term rental further improved its result from +9.06% in the first six months to +19.25% for the entire year.

In long-term car rental the most popular fuel in 2025 is petrol (including mild hybrids) with a 41% share. In Q4, however, petrols lost over 4.5 points compared to the same period last year: petrols in Q4 accounted for 34.4% of Nlt registrations. Diesels, on the other hand, fell sharply: -19.9% (again including mild-hybrids) over the full year 2025, reducing their market share to below 28%, with a volume of less than 100,000 units (last year they were the most popular fuel in Nlt). In 2025, petrol cars will overtake them.

Full and plug-in hybrids 2025 cumulatively accounted for 22.6% of the long-term rental market (but in Q4 they were close to 28%). In particular, full hybrids remained stable compared to the growth rate of the Nlt market (the overall average was +11.6%), while plug-in hybrids were the protagonists of an unprecedented advance: +97.8%, reaching a market share of 12.9% (9.7% for full hybrids).

Electric cars continue to grow significantly in long-term rental: +15.9% in Q4, +39.4% in 2025. Bev's share of Nlt is now around 7%, compared to 5% for the total market. Gas-powered cars are growing (+113.5% in 2025) but still remain confined to negligible volumes and market shares (just over 1.5%), in contrast to the private market.

In short-term rental, petrol (below 44% share in Q4, but 58.2% in the 12 months to 2025), diesel (14.7%), full hybrids (11.9%) and plug-in hybrids (9.4%) share almost the entire car market. It is interesting to note the exponential growth of Phev registrations, which in Q4 doubled the full hybrids, which stood at a meagre 11% share. Short-term rental registrations of petrol cars are up (+12.3%), diesel registrations are down 39.2% for the year.