Rental cars are getting more and more expensive. The prices for rental cars in Germany were 48.7 percent higher in May than in the same month last year, as the Federal Statistical Office announced on Tuesday. By way of comparison, overall inflation rose by 7.9 percent over the same period.
Above-average price increases for rental cars have been around for a long time: since May 2021 in particular, private households for renting motor vehicles in Germany have had to accept double-digit inflation rates. Holidaymakers abroad also feel this. The reasons for this are diverse. Many providers of rental cars had reduced their vehicle fleets in the first year of Corona. The virus pandemic then slowed down the production of the car manufacturers, and the used car market was almost empty in certain segments.
In 2020, around 31,900 people worked in around 4,400 companies in Germany that offer rental cars. They generated sales of around 34.7 billion euros. In 2020, the annual average price development for rental cars was 0.8 percent, just slightly above the overall inflation rate of 0.5 percent.
