The pandemic has profoundly changed Italians' relationship with the car. It is increasingly seen not as a passion, but more than ever as an indispensable means of transport, even as awareness of environmental sustainability — and with it concern about pollution — continues to grow. The portrait of motorists after a year of health emergency is painted by the Focus auto 2021 survey conducted by the Findomestic observatory, a consumer credit company belonging to the BNP Paribas group.

Safer journeys, even if reduced to the bare essentials

79 per cent of Italians are sensitive to the environmental impacts of four-wheeled vehicles (compared with a global average of 72 per cent and a European average of 69 per cent), yet six out of ten could not do without them; today more than ever, they consider cars indispensable for avoiding public transport and getting around more safely. The love affair between Italians and the car endures, even if it has been sorely tested by the Coronavirus emergency and by a growing environmental awareness: only 4 per cent of Italians (compared with 21 per cent in Europe and 25 per cent worldwide) still experience the car as a passion; on the other hand, Italians, Chinese, South Africans and Brazilians say they depend on cars for their daily journeys even more than before.

Journeys which, moreover, were reduced to the essentials owing to restrictions. 46 per cent of Italian respondents reduced their leisure travel, and more than half cut their use of the car at weekends and on holiday. At the same time, in the name of greater environmental awareness, 88 per cent of Italians (six points more than the rest of the world) are willing to use the car even less in cities and to choose eco-friendly means of transport instead, such as bicycles or scooters, also to combat the stress accumulated in traffic and in the search for parking spaces.

The car of the future is electric, but for now hybrid wins out

Italians' approach to the car is changing, yet their attachment to it remains constant over time: on a scale of one to ten, it scores an average approval rating of 7.3, just behind the home (8.4) and the smartphone (7.5). Globally, it is in particular the higher social classes that are most attached to their cars, while lower-income people are far less so. On the subject of powertrains, the car of the future is the electric one for 86 per cent of the Italian sample, a conviction shared on average by 77 per cent of respondents in other countries.

But it is the Chinese and the British who are most eager to switch to electric cars (27 and 28 per cent respectively, compared with 17 per cent for Italians and the global average); Italians and Spaniards, by contrast, are the most inclined to buy a hybrid car, at 43 and 42 per cent respectively, against an average of 26 per cent. And there are still countries where the preference for traditional powertrains is strong: the Dutch and South Africans favour petrol engines, while the Turks have remained virtually alone in supporting diesel in any significant way.