Car sharing thrives in metropolises but loses operators in small towns

Car sharing thrives above all in Rome and Milan, while in medium-sized cities it struggles and loses operators. The numbers tell the tale: out of 300,000 users registered for car sharing services in Italy in 2023, as many as 250,000 are in the capital and the Lombard capital. The weight of the two cities in terms of car sharing also emerges from the number of cars in their fleets (2,700 out of a total of 3,500 in Italy) and the number of rentals made during the year, over 80% of those made nationwide.

Up until 2019, car sharing took its first steps in Italy with optimism, starting, of course, with the big cities, where the bulk of the offerings were made. But today the business is increasingly concentrated in the two big metropolises. Here it is holding up, but in the rest of Italy it is declining. In 2023, there were almost 5 million car-sharing rentals, 10 per cent less than in 2022 and almost half the 10 million or so reached before the pandemic.

In comparison with 2020, active users have grown by 23% and service times are getting longer, with weekend and multi-day formulas becoming more popular and the average rental duration rising from 77 to 95 minutes. Going into the details of car sharing in Milan and Rome, the former can count on a fleet of 1,600 cars, which are used on average for 89 minutes and a distance of 14 kilometres. In the capital city, on the other hand, due to its larger size, car sharing is used on average for 115 minutes and for about 16.8 kilometres. The typical user is quite young: half of all rentals in Italy are made by those between 18 and 35 years of age; in 68% of cases they are men.

"Car sharing is becoming increasingly concentrated in Rome and Milan, while in the other cities many operators are withdrawing," confirms Aniasa, the association representing the mobility services sector in Confindustria. These are observations that leave a bitter taste in the mouth, for a service that until 2019 was grinding out much higher numbers and seemed destined to spread more widely in Italy from North to South, while today it seems to have to make do with just the major cities.

This is a pity, according to Aniasa, also because car sharing could express a social value for the entire citizenry by reducing traffic for personal use.