Johan Portier (Renta): ‘second-hand market needs urgent support’

At their annual press conference, the Belgian Association of Vehicle Rental Companies Renta urgently appealed for help. Renta Chairman and Ayvens CEO Johan Portier made it clear that the second-hand market needs structural support, now.

“The Belgian market is now like an island in Europe. With its heavy emphasis on company cars (B2B market) and the fact that they will all be EVs very soon, the second-hand market (largely B2C) has a big problem. It needs some support (fiscal or other) to wake up the electric B2C market before it’s too late.”

Too old, too expensive?

Instigated by the authorities, rental companies have heavily invested in making their car parks greener by seriously promoting electric cars, aided by fiscal incentives from the government. These EVs are now coming onto a second-hand market that isn’t ready for them.

Almost nobody wants to buy those large and usually expensive EVs at their residual value price, which was determined some four years ago. The evolution of the EV market is such that new, smaller EVs are technically and financially more interesting than the older ones.

As the B2C market as a whole remains pretty reluctant to buy EVs for the moment, the problem in the second-hand market for EVs becomes acute. These vehicles, mostly coming from rental companies, need urgent support of any kind to make them attractive to individual buyers.

“Our mobility sector as a whole represents 160,000 jobs and 10,000 companies in Belgium, representing 2.6% of the GNP. We urgently need a consistent and coherent vision of mobility. This implies authentic leadership, serious creativity, and a lot of empathy,” concludes Portier.

Who is Renta?

Renta vzw was created in 1957 and is one of the three professional pillars of the mobility sector, together with Febiac (federation of manufacturers and importers) and Traxio, representing dealers and the garage sector. Recently, they united under the umbrella of Mobia.

Renta has 55 members, representing over 90% of the Belux vehicle rental market. On June 30th this year, they managed 586,089 vehicles, some 90% of the total Belux rental fleet of approximately 650,000 vehicles.

In the first half of this year, almost one-third of all newly registered vehicles in the Belux were leasing vehicles. “This illustrates the importance of this rental sector for the country’s mobility and economy,” Renta emphasizes.