Car rental companies operating in Europe recorded approx 779,000 new vehicles in the first half of 2024. They marked a 24% increase compared to the same period last year, while sending the message that the market is returning to normal.

At the same time, car rental prices are on a downward trend, which is another sign that the market is returning to normal, notes data aggregator Dataforce, which compiled data on rental registrations from 20 European countries.

The biggest market for new rental vehicle registrations in the first half of this year was Germany (around 190,000 units), followed by Spain (152,000), France (132,000), the United Kingdom (95,000) and Italy (84,000). These big five markets account for 84% of the records collected by the vehicle data specialists. In other markets Denmark and the Netherlands had 17,000 registrations, Sweden had 16,000 units, Belgium, Switzerland and Norway each had 10,000 units, Austria had 9,000 registrations, Portugal had 8,000 units and Poland had 7,000m registrations. Also, Finland had 5,000 units, Iceland and the Czech Republic each had 4,000 units, Lithuania had 3,000 and Latvia and Slovakia both had 2,000 units.

In practice this means that one in 10 vehicles registered in Europe in the first half of 2024 was a rental. Spain has the highest rental penetration, with one in four vehicles registered in the country belonging to this category. However, the country is the fifth largest car market overall and the second largest rental car market, behind Germany.

The biggest increase in rental registrations took place in the UK, where they increased by 111% compared to last year’s period. Another notable development is that the share of electric cars in registrations will shrink from 6.4% in the first half of 2023 to 3.8% in the corresponding period this year.

Two major factors explaining the decline in popularity of electrics in the rental sector are that firstly customer demand is low due to concerns about range and charging and secondly there is uncertainty about residual values.

Most (57.3%) of rental cars registered in the first half of 2024 are still petrol-powered, followed by diesel (26.9%), mild hybrids (6.1%), plug-in hybrids ( 4.8%) and electrics (3.8%) ), according to Dataforce.