GO-Mobility

Why do we keep buying so many cars?

Una disamina del paradosso italiano

The latest Istat report on vehicle fleet indicators leaves no room for doubt: once again, Italy is confirmed as the country with the highest car ownership rate in the EU, with 701 cars per 1,000 inhabitants compared to a European average of 578. This gap is nothing new (we have held this record for years) but it continues to widen, whilst major economies such as Germany, France and Spain remain virtually stable (590, 579 and 544 respectively). But what do we need all these cars for, and why do we keep buying them? Let’s try to answer that.

What are they for?

Given our long-standing position at the top of the motoring rankings, it would be natural to assume that we are a nation with a strong need to get about by car. The data, however, seems to tell a different story: the MIT Observatory report for the second quarter of 2025 (FS Research Centre, Vodafone TELCO data for 2024 based on over 23 million SIM cards analysed) shows that on an average weekday in Italy, around 37 million people travel, or 71.6% of the population. This means that, on average, almost 3 in 10 people do not travel at all (28.4%).

To make a comparison across several countries, a useful benchmark is the daily distance travelled, as derived from national sample surveys compiled by Eurostat[1]. The data confirm that our daily mobility needs fall within the lower-middle range: with approximately 11.4 km travelled per person per day for urban journeys[2] (taking all modes of transport into account), Italy ranks below Germany (19 km), Portugal (18.4 km), Poland (17.0 km) and Denmark (16.5 km). If we cross-reference this data with the car ownership rate (also from 2017, obtained from Eurostat’s Data Browser), it becomes clear that in Italy car ownership exceeds actual usage (Figure 1).

Figure 1 Source: Eurostat data (Passenger Mobility Statistics + Data browser)

What about the (un)efficency?

This picture is reinforced by another Eurostat figure from the Passenger Mobility Statistics: the average vehicle occupancy rate. In almost all European countries, this rate ranges between 1.20 and 1.90 people per vehicle, but Italy has the lowest figure by far, at 1.17 people per car. In practice, on average, we almost always drive alone.

Figure 2 Source: Passenger Mobility Statistics

Adding to the picture of inefficiency – characterised by vehicles travelling half-empty and over short distances – are the figures on usage frequency. Our analysis of FCD (Floating Car Data), based on over a million vehicles monitored in 14 Italian metropolitan cities (2024 data), reveals that within metropolitan cities, 13% of the car fleet is used for fewer than 5 working days a month. This figure rises to 20% — one in five vehicles — when considering municipal boundaries, where average usage stands at 30 minutes per day[3]: the vehicle remains parked for the remaining 98% of the time, fuelling a sort of urban ‘sleeping fleet’ (we discussed this here).

Still dependent, but in a different way

Of course, the situation varies across the country: the Istat report reveals significant differences in car ownership rates, which, as might be expected, tend to be lower in large cities (the average for regional capitals is 651 cars per 1,000 inhabitants, while that for the capitals of metropolitan areas falls to 612) and much higher in cities in the South. Catania has 824 cars per 1,000 inhabitants, Frosinone reaches 856 among provincial capitals, whilst Venice has the lowest figure at 460 – highlighting a structural link between higher car ownership and use and the lack of public transport infrastructure and alternatives to private cars. In the South, for example, according to the same Istat data, the provision of local public transport has historically been weaker (2,027–2,120 passenger-kilometres per inhabitant compared to 7,590 in the provincial capitals of the North-West), as is the case in less densely populated areas outside the provincial capitals.

The differences observed in travel patterns between the municipalities and metropolitan areas in our data confirm this: in densely populated cities, partly due to the greater availability of viable transport alternatives, daily reliance on the car is reduced, but the desire to own one is not eliminated. In these contexts, the car often changes function: rather than being the primary means of transport, it seems to take on the role of a backup vehicle, used sporadically for specific needs. This is what we have termed ‘necessity ownership’, or the car as an ‘insurance policy’: we feel the need to own a vehicle even though we know we will use it little, to ensure we have a reliable option in case of need (be it trips out of town or journeys to places or at times not served by public transport).

Prendendo ad esempio il comune di Roma Capitale: se osserviamo in parallelo l’andamento del parco auto con la domanda di mobilità (percorrenze medie giornaliere per kmq), vediamo che se il primo continua ad ampliarsi anno dopo anno con una traiettoria in ascesa (+7,6% dal 2019 al 2024), la seconda non cresce in modo coerente con questo aumento (+1,2%). L’uso effettivo della rete è molto più volatile e non si sincronizza con la crescita del parco auto, segnalando una sproporzione tra stock posseduto e uso effettivo.

Figure 3. Graphical representation of FCD GO-Mobility data. View our dashboards https://datamobility.it/dashboard-mobilita-2025/

This picture confirms that Italy is a country where private car ownership is exceptionally high, even when usage is low, sporadic or largely confined to specific local areas.

Figure 4: Composite indicator derived by comparing the data from the previous graph

We rarely use our cars, often alone and for short distances: so why do we keep buying them?

In Italian cities, car ownership seems to stem more from a need for the ‘certainty’ of being able to get around than from any intrinsic utility (frequency of use), becoming a ‘safety net’ against the real or perceived uncertainty of alternative transport systems.

People buy (and keep) a car not so much because they intend to use it, but because they don’t trust the alternatives enough – even in cities where public transport exists and works (and where, for safety’s sake, families tend to keep a spare car).

This phenomenon also partly explains why the vehicle fleet is being renewed at a slower rate than in other EU countries: if a car is not used intensively, there is less pressure to replace it, and so more polluting vehicles remain on the road. According to the Istat press release, at national level the proportion of cars aged 20 years or more stands at 24.3%, compared with 10% in Germany and 12.5% in France.

The crux of the matter: systemic inefficiency

The crux of the matter in Italy, therefore, is not so much the heavy use of cars, but the fact that we have a huge vehicle fleet (which is growing, underused and, on average, ageing) that pollutes and takes up space (with vehicles becoming increasingly heavy and bulky, as we have explored in detail here) in a densely populated country where, due to its geographical and historical characteristics, space for these cars is in short supply.

Source: Eurostat

Against the backdrop of this heavy traffic, the data show that Italy stands out for the inefficiency of its road use: it is here that the rate of car ownership begins to be seen not merely as an indicator of mobility, but as an indicator of the transport system’s actual or perceived vulnerability.

What is the perspective?

To reverse this trend, action is needed on several fronts: a more reliable, efficient and accessible public transport system, organised more sensibly, particularly in areas that are currently most reliant on cars (see our article for some ideas) Make TPL great again). But also to develop more efficient and alternative models of shared mobility (spread, smart, flexible: from the “Mobility as a Community” model thought for remote areas, to the use of existing technologies and platforms with the Mobility as a Feature paradigm).

For the impact to be genuine, measures to encourage a modal shift must be accompanied in parallel by measures to discourage car ownership – measures that are less popular but necessary to eliminate that margin of convenience that makes it possible to own (a first, second or third) car ‘just in case’. The most effective European examples point to three levers: urban space pricing, with progressive charging for on-street parking and a reduction in free parking in areas already served by public transport, so as to make the real cost of a stationary car explicit. But also road pricing, such as charging for access to central areas (for example, Milan’s Area C), which reduces vehicle demand during peak hours and generates resources to be reinvested in more sustainable mobility services. Finally, vehicle taxation: progressive road tax based on age and emissions, or pay-per-use insurance schemes, would highlight the cost of maintaining a car that is rarely used. If combined with innovative forms of scrappage without replacement (e.g. scrapping a vehicle in exchange for ‘mobility credits’ to be spent on public transport season tickets, MaaS platforms or other forms of mobility), these measures could provide the necessary ‘nudge’ not only to refrain from buying, but also to get rid of currently underused vehicles.

Finally, when it comes to our work, in order to interpret all this accurately and provide data and tools to support decision-making, we need more comprehensive metrics than those currently available. International comparisons based solely on travel surveys remain useful but have obvious limitations, especially given the technologies and methodologies available today, which are undergoing unprecedented advances. Some progress in this direction is already being made: mobile network data is becoming part of the future of European statistics, with an MNO data project led by Istat and co-funded by Eurostat, which has already demonstrated the potential of data from mobile network operators and other data sources for official statistics. The possibility of integrating travel surveys and big data capable of measuring actual behaviour (from FCDs, mobile phone cells, apps) opens up the possibility of studying people’s mobility behaviour in depth, offering a potential starting point for finding more precise answers to the Italian paradox and, hopefully, formulating the best possible solutions.

[1] Source: Passenger Mobility Statistics (Figure 1). The years for which this data was collected for each country are as follows: 2013–2014 Austria, 2015 the Netherlands, 2016 Poland, 2017 Belgium, Germany, Latvia, Portugal and Slovenia, 2018 Greece and Romania, 2019 Croatia, Denmark and Italy (as shown in Table 5 of the document).

[2] The Eurostat report focuses on journeys of less than 300 km.

[3] The daily time spent driving is calculated by summing up all actual journey times, divided by the number of working days and the number of vehicles in the sample, expressed in minutes per day. For further information, please refer to the methodologic note

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