the car rental market | Portugal

1.1 Definition and scope of study

The car rental market concerns all transactions between companies and individuals who allow the loan of a vehicle for a certain period of time. A distinction is generally made between short-term, long-term or leasehold rentals.

Short-term rental activities include carpooling, defined as the sharing of a vehicle or fleet of ground transportation vehicles for the benefit of users who are subscribed to or authorized by the organization or person managing the vehicles.

This study focuses on exclusively on short-term rentals of passenger cars and light commercial vehicles as well as on carpooling activities . This is a very dynamic and growing global market and the French and German markets are the main markets in Europe.

In 2018, 2.75 million car rentals were made, the main players being Avis, Europcar, Enterprise, Hertz and Sixt. [ Público In addition to the growing demand for hybrid/electric car rentals, new trends in the domestic market are the car-sharing model, which makes it possible to travel without the problems associated with maintenance or parking costs in a private car, and the business car rental model. The latter allows companies to share a rental car with several employees, following the example of the application developed by Europcar called Ubeeqo Business