Europcar UK is seeing increasingly strong demand for electric car hire, with fully-electric vehicles accounting for nearly half a million rental days in 2025 – an increase of 93% over 2024. Meanwhile, 2025 also saw Europcar’s own EV fleet grow by 70%, with the addition of new models from brands such as Polestar, Hyundai, and BYD. Electric vehicles now make up around 15% of Europcar’s overall fleet, with that proportion set to rise in the coming years.
The increasing demand for electric rentals (primarily coming from business customers, who were accountable for 86% of EV rentals in 2025) has been propped up by significant work undertaken on Europcar’s side. This includes an ongoing partnership with Octopus Electroverse, allowing Europcar’s EV-renting customers to have seamless access to over one million public chargers in the UK and Europe. Additionally, last year Europcar announced that business EV rentals would be priced equally to their petrol and diesel equivalents – which may also explain why Europcar is now seeing seriously strong demand for EV rentals from business customers in particular.
On the private rental side, the growth in electric car hire also presents a valuable opportunity for many to experience electric driving for the first time before committing to ownership. Europcar has leaned into this by investing in customer education such as offering EV-specific handovers, building confidence among first-time EV drivers. With perceived range anxiety and unfamiliarity still cited as common deterrents to EV adoption, rental is increasingly being seen as a low-risk gateway to electric motoring.
Christian Øien, Managing Director of Europcar Mobility Group UK, commented:
“At Europcar we are on a mission to remove the barriers that hold motorists back from choosing environmentally friendly vehicles. From creating dedicated self-help resources such as our EV Guide to providing detailed vehicle handovers for EV newbies, we are extremely proud of the progress we have already made and the positive impact it has had on customer confidence in electric driving. Not only have we seen a significant increase in EV rentals year-on-year; we have also achieved NPS scores for electric vehicles that are 10% higher than for petrol and diesel vehicles.”
