In the lockdown, car rental companies have reduced their fleets. Now they are increasing the fleet again. However, this creates difficulties.
According to industry information, rental cars now cost significantly more due to the production bottlenecks at the car manufacturers. “In Germany we are currently on average 10 to 20 percent above the prices of 2019,” said a spokeswoman for the largest German car rental company Sixt.
For 2022, the effects of the carmaker’s delivery bottlenecks on the offerings of landlords and the development of market prices are difficult to predict, according to Sixt.
The President of the Federal Association of Car Rental Companies (BAV), Jens Hilgerloh, said: “At the moment things are going very well because demand is stable” – although at a lower level than before Corona, but “at higher prices”. Normally, German car rental companies bought 350,000 to 400,000 cars from manufacturers, “that’s 10 to 12 percent of the total market,” Hilgerloh told the German press agency. Large landlords would get corresponding customer discounts.
Missing components
But now, despite high demand, manufacturers cannot build hundreds of thousands of cars because semiconductors and other components are missing. The result: delivery times are getting longer, car buyers get fewer discounts. Hilgerloh estimates that 20 to 25 percent of the vehicles required by rental companies in Germany cannot be delivered and that around 75,000 are missing in the fleets. Because «the car rental companies are not the number one priority for the manufacturers».
On the one hand, automakers earned more from selling cars to private customers than they did from cars for rental fleets. Daimler boss Ola Källenius recently said at the IAA that Mercedes-Benz wanted to sell cars at “premium prices” and not with lower returns to car rental companies.
On the other hand, business relationships suffered during the corona lockdowns, said Hilgerloh. Despite delivery agreements with manufacturers, some landlords would not have wanted to buy any new vehicles because their cars were already blocking the parking spaces at airport stations. All major car rental companies had greatly reduced their fleets in the Corona crisis and are now increasing them again.
Jane Stock is a technology author, who has written for 24 Hours World. She writes about the latest in technology news and trends, and is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve his audience’s experience.
