Rental Fleet Vehicle Finance: What the EV Resale Numbers Really Show

Rental Fleets Bet Big on EVs. The Resale Numbers Are In.

In short: UK rental fleets have expanded their electric and hybrid share from around 3% to 10% since 2022, according to BVRLA's own data. But a separate BVRLA report found rental customer demand for EVs remains weak, and electric vehicles still depreciate somewhat faster than petrol equivalents, 38-42% over three years against 35-40%, which pushes up rental pricing and complicates the economics for operators. Rental fleet vehicle finance structured around that residual value uncertainty is becoming less optional and more essential.

Rental operators didn't go electric because customers were asking for it in large numbers. They went electric because regulation required it, and because the wider fleet market was moving that way regardless. Now that a meaningful share of the UK rental fleet has made the switch, the resale and demand data is starting to tell a more complicated story than the sustainability headlines suggested.

How Fast Rental Fleets Have Actually Gone Electric

BVRLA's Rental Credentials report, produced with PA Consulting using operating data from companies representing around 70% of the UK's car and van rental fleet, shows the plug-in share of the rental fleet, electric plus hybrid combined, rose from roughly 3% in 2022 to about 10% in 2024. Battery electric vehicles specifically account for around 4% of the fleet, having grown 200% since 2022.

That growth sits alongside a less-discussed shift in the rest of the fleet. Since 2018, petrol's share of the UK rental fleet has grown from 48% to 73%, while diesel has collapsed from half the fleet to just 11%. The rental fleet's average CO2 emissions, at 125.9g/km, now sit below the UK's overall car average of 132g/km, and the average rental vehicle covers more than 11,000 miles a year, well above typical private car usage.

What Rental Customers Actually Want

Growth in EV fleet share doesn't necessarily reflect growth in customer appetite. A separate BVRLA Industry Outlook Report found that demand for electric vehicles among rental customers is genuinely weak, described as close to non-existent among inbound tourists and leisure hirers, and minimal even among business clients booking corporate rentals.

The report points to a fairly direct mechanism behind that reluctance. Because EVs still carry higher depreciation than equivalent petrol or diesel vehicles, rental companies generally have to charge more to hire them, which pushes price-conscious customers toward cheaper combustion-engine options. That, in turn, keeps EV utilisation low relative to fleet size, which does nothing to help the underlying economics. BVRLA has also flagged the cost of installing enough rapid-charging infrastructure at rental stations to support fast vehicle turnaround as prohibitively expensive for many operators, on top of the practical issue that recharging a vehicle between hires delays its availability to the next customer in a way that refuelling a petrol car simply doesn't.

Why EV Depreciation Still Works Against Rental Operators

The resale numbers, now that there's enough used EV volume in the market to measure them properly, show a picture that's improving but not yet resolved. Cox Automotive data from late 2025 put average EV depreciation at 38-42% after three years, compared with 35-40% for equivalent petrol vehicles, a gap that has narrowed considerably from the sharper declines seen in 2023 to 2024 but hasn't closed entirely.

Encouragingly for rental operators carrying EV fleet depreciation risk, industry analysis reported by Fleet News suggests electric values are now behaving with more consistency than petrol values, which have themselves become more volatile as a wave of ex-lease petrol stock floods the used market. That's a meaningful shift from a few years ago, when EV residuals were considered the riskier bet by a wide margin. It doesn't erase the depreciation gap, but it does mean fleet buyers can plan around EV fleet depreciation with somewhat more confidence than before, even if the numbers still favour petrol by a few percentage points.

The ZEV Mandate Is Forcing the Issue Regardless of Demand

Rental operators don't get to opt out of this transition based on customer preference alone. The Zero Emission Vehicle mandate requires manufacturers to hit rising annual EV sales targets, 22% of new cars in 2024, 28% in 2025, and climbing to 80% by 2030, with equivalent targets for vans starting lower but rising just as steeply. Non-compliance carries financial penalties for manufacturers, which filters through to the wholesale supply and pricing that rental fleets ultimately buy into.

BVRLA has been explicit that these thresholds sit well above the level of genuine demand rental operators are seeing from their own customers, creating a structural tension: the vehicles arriving on rental forecourts in growing numbers aren't necessarily the vehicles customers are choosing to hire, which puts pressure on utilisation, pricing, and ultimately resale timing for the whole fleet.

What This Means for Fleet Buying Decisions

For a self-drive or rental operator, this leaves a genuinely difficult balancing act:

Regulatory and supply pressure is pushing more EVs into the fleet regardless of demand signals

Customer demand for EV hire remains weak outside a narrow segment of environmentally motivated or corporate hirers

Depreciation on EVs is improving but still runs a few percentage points behind petrol at the three-year mark

Charging infrastructure costs add a layer of capital expenditure that petrol and diesel fleets never required

None of this means expanding an EV rental fleet is the wrong call, the direction of travel is clear and unlikely to reverse. But it does mean the timing, financing structure, and disposal strategy around each vehicle matters more than it used to, particularly while EV fleet depreciation remains somewhat less predictable than the combustion vehicles operators have run for decades.

Operators running self-drive fleet finance across a mixed petrol and EV fleet are increasingly treating the two categories differently rather than applying a single blanket approach. A petrol vehicle with a well-understood depreciation curve can reasonably be financed over a longer term with more certainty about its value at disposal. An EV, even with the improving residual value picture, still carries enough uncertainty that shorter terms, or finance structures that transfer some of that risk elsewhere, tend to make more sense. That distinction is becoming a standard part of how experienced fleet buyers approach car rental fleet finance decisions, rather than a niche consideration reserved for the largest operators.

Rental Fleet Vehicle Finance: Managing the Residual Value Risk

This is where rental fleet vehicle finance earns its keep. Structures like contract hire shift residual value risk away from the operator and onto the finance provider, which matters considerably when a vehicle category's resale performance is still stabilising rather than fully settled. Finance lease offers a different balance, useful for operators who want more control over disposal timing but still prefer to avoid a large upfront capital outlay on vehicles whose future value carries more uncertainty than a comparable petrol car.

For self-drive fleet finance covering a mixed fleet, some petrol, some EV, the ability to structure each vehicle category differently matters. A rental operator carrying EV fleet depreciation risk across dozens or hundreds of vehicles is in a very different position to one financing a handful of test vehicles, and car rental fleet finance arrangements can be built around that scale, rather than forcing every vehicle onto the same terms regardless of how its resale profile behaves.

None of this guarantees a particular financial outcome, and electric vehicle resale value UK data will keep shifting as the used market matures further. But operators treating EV fleet acquisition as a financed, risk-managed decision, rather than a straightforward purchase, are better placed to absorb whatever the resale numbers do next.

The operators managing this transition most comfortably tend to share one habit: they revisit their rental fleet vehicle finance structure at each renewal cycle rather than rolling over the same terms by default. As electric vehicle resale value UK data continues to firm up and the gap to petrol narrows further, the right financing mix for a given fleet today may look quite different twelve months from now, which makes an annual review, rather than a set-and-forget approach, the more sensible habit for operators navigating a still-evolving market.