Costs, recharging, full electric: all the nodes of the rental business
Corporate fleets are undergoing a profound transformation: tax policies and European regulations will determine the future
by Pier Luigi del Viscovo
Long-term rental (Nlt) entered the new year with more questions than answers. It was left with 2025, a treacherous year because it is easy to be underestimated. Fortunately, the Nlt leaders do not seem to want to. They speak without any false modesty about the thousands that have pushed up captive registrations. Some call it hysteria, having thousands of registered cars on the forecourts waiting for a customer to turn up. Welcome to the car market, they would say, since dealers have been dealing with the problem for 20 years, having learnt not only to live with it but also to make money from it.
Hirers understand the pressure from manufacturers to license electric cars or, at the limit, plug-in cars in order to limit the fines that will be incurred in the three-year period '25/'27, but they do not seem inclined to get used to it. They call for stability and clarity so as not to disorientate a customer base that already has less certainty than it once did.
The other fine legacy lies in the fringe benefit rules, which have slowed down customer decisions and curbed registrations by non-captive renters. Since the tax advantage is really one of those offers that cannot be refused, as Don Corleone put it, in the end, those who have had to order have chosen, obtorto collo, a plug-in and in rare cases a full electric. But renters who took part in a forum promoted by AgitaLab, a think tank, are keen to emphasise that when it comes to non-purpose, i.e. unallocated, cars, the choice remains with the petrol-hybrid and indeed often with the diesel, which they say is experiencing a new youth - and about time too, we might add. To complete the picture, there are also companies with calculators that with some drivers, those with 50,000 km/year, prefer to send them around in diesel and pay them a sum in their envelope to make up for the tax burden: in the end it costs less.
But the push for plug-in cars does not only come from manufacturers. In many cases, it is the big companies themselves, especially if they are listed on the stock exchange, who in deference to ESG policies, are self-imposing ultra-low or zero-emission cars. At the exhaust, of course. There are no cars on the market that move without emitting CO2 over the whole cycle. However, the promoters and followers of ESG are content with exhaust and therefore force managers onto electric or plug-in cars. For the latter, the problem is running costs, as they are known to run on petrol or diesel and consume a lot due to the weight of the batteries. Instead for the former, whose level of engagement (seduction, in Italian and said of a car) remains low, the issue is how to deal with recharging. If at home, the question is who pays for the electricity; if out and about, the question is whether the waiting time is within working hours.
For all cars, there is the question of price. As is well known, list prices have risen in recent years. If before Covid the average net value of rental cars was 21,600 euro, it has now exceeded 32,000, according to an analysis by the Fleet&Mobility Research Centre. Ten thousand euro more is not easily absorbed in car policies. If before the employee with the company car solved the problem of the family car, now he gets a compact and... is not happy.
