Leasing is known as “the VO factory”given that it is the companies that acquire modern fleets for a short period of time (normally around four years), during which they are moderately used and return in good condition and with interesting equipment to the second-hand market , where they are sold as pre-owned.
In addition, companies that want to score an environmental point opt for hybrid models, creating an access route for these models for a part of the population that cannot get hold of new ones. This is one of the reasons why its fleet is comparatively less polluting than the rest of the market.
According to Spanish Renting Association (AER), new leased vehicles, registered during the first semester, register an average consumption of 5.04 litres/100 km and average emissions of 125.64 grams of CO2. The rest of the market registers an average consumption of 5.26 litres/100 km, 4.18% more, and emissions of 129.14 g CO2/km, 3.5 grams more.
The AER counts within its 123,523 registrations to cars and light commercials. In the first half of the year, this figure represents a decrease of 12.6% compared to the same period of the previous year, when 141,323 units were registered.
Leasing is a channel that has suffered most from the shortage of semiconductors and the production stoppages that these caused, as manufacturers focused on more profitable sales, such as the private market. The biggest victims were the rent a car operators.
According to the president of the association, Jose-Martin Castro Acebes, states that “knowing this evolution of emissions and consumption encourages us to continue promoting policies aimed at reducing the impact that our mobility has on the environment. There is a real awareness for sustainability.
For Castro Acebes, the improvement in results occurs “thanks to the growth of vehicles powered by alternative energies, which accounted for 32.14%, compared to 25.49% last year. Notwithstanding the foregoing, achieving the objectives will take time, since Spain still has a park that is more than 13 years old.
Second-hand rental
In the last 3 years, renting for individuals and freelancers has grown exponentially and already one in four registrations son of vehicles intended for renting. Everything, in the midst of a panorama of instability marked by the shortage of stock derived from the microchip crisis, the war in Ukraine and the legislative changes that will eliminate the most polluting models from the center of cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants, thus promoting the electrification of the mobile fleet in Spain.
“Renting is going to play a fundamental role in mobility in Spain,” says Íñigo Breña, director of RentingCoches.com, convinced that “the accessibility, flexibility, comfort and tax advantages offered by this modality constitute a perfect formula to deal with, for example, with the restrictions on circulation» in the large Spanish cities.
The community where renting increased the most during 2021 was Aragón, both in the number of vehicles and in the number of customers. This growth translated into figures supposes an increase of 20.11% in number of rental vehicles and 19.24% in number of clients. However, Madrid and Catalonia continue to be the communities with the greatest weight in the total volume, accounting for 37.01% and 25.01% of rental vehicles, respectively.