The industry association has raised the alarm: car rentals are down 90 per cent, car sharing down 60. The impacts of coronavirus on mobility are more dramatic than those of 11 September.
Short-term car rental — the classic rent-a-car service at airports, train stations and city centres — is down 90 per cent. Car sharing in the major cities is recording a contraction of 60 per cent. The coronavirus and the inevitable repercussions on people's movements, as defined by the #iorestoacasa decree, are hitting mobility hard, from production to sales through to services. The alarm has been raised by Aniasa, the association that represents the mobility services sector within Confindustria. "The sector is today on the brink of the abyss, living through an unprecedented crisis — not even dramatic events such as 11 September had produced effects this devastating," Massimiliano Archiapatti, president of Aniasa, declared in Rome in recent days.
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The restrictive measures on people's mobility imposed by the coronavirus and by the measures adopted by the government in recent days have effectively brought the car rental sector to its knees, with bookings cancelled through to June. And the situation — rental operators report — is getting steadily worse. Car sharing services in major cities are also suffering, with a contraction of 60 per cent.
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Alongside short-term rental, orders for new vehicles from companies are also slowing, as businesses prefer to extend existing contracts. Long-term rental, linked to company cars, is worth more than 1 million vehicles on the road in Italy. In our country, one in four cars sold is a rental car; if the situation were to continue much longer — and in the absence of government support — the repercussions on the car market, already in sharp decline in recent months, will be very severe.
