How many cars are there really in Italian municipalities? Vehicle registry (PRA) and ISTAT data on the car fleet, available municipality by municipality from 2006 to 2023, tell of an Italy moving at several speeds: municipalities with more than six cars per inhabitant, islands almost without cars, and villages where the absolute majority of the circulating fleet is stuck in Euro 0-3 emission classes.
But beware: the motorization rate ranking hides a statistical trap worth telling, because it is the most interesting story of all.
The 10 municipalities with the highest motorization rate
Cars registered per 1,000 resident inhabitants (2023)
The Aosta mystery: 6,422 cars per 1,000 inhabitants
At the top of the ranking is Aosta with 6,422 cars per 1,000 inhabitants: more than six cars per person, newborns included. Scandicci follows with 5,594, Trento with 4,578 and Bolzano with 2,093. Real numbers, but they do not describe residents' mobility habits: they describe where cars are registered, not where they circulate.
The explanation is fiscal and administrative. Large rental and leasing companies register their fleets at the provincial vehicle registry offices where they have their legal seat, and have historically chosen territories such as the Aosta Valley and the autonomous provinces of Trento and Bolzano, thanks to favourable costs and administrative regimes. Hundreds of thousands of company and rental cars circulating all over Italy thus formally appear as registered in Aosta or Trento. The Scandicci case follows the same logic: long-term rental operators are based in this town at the gates of Florence. It is a perfect example of how a true figure can be misleading if you do not know the mechanism generating it.
The 10 municipalities with the lowest motorization rate
Cars registered per 1,000 resident inhabitants: the lowest values (2023)
Where cars (almost) do not exist
The opposite ranking is a gallery of places where the car is of little use or simply cannot arrive. Capri is Italy's least motorized municipality with 251 cars per 1,000 inhabitants, followed by Anacapri with 382: on the island circulation is heavily restricted and most travel happens on foot, by funicular or by scooter. Then come Campione d'Italia, the exclave on Lake Lugano, with 411, Monte Isola on Lake Iseo with 416, where cars are forbidden to non-residents, and the Cinque Terre with Vernazza at 431 and Monterosso al Mare at 434.
Amid island and seaside villages a metropolitan case stands out: Baranzate, at the gates of Milan, with 421 cars per 1,000 inhabitants, one of Italy's most densely populated and youngest municipalities, where low incomes and the proximity of Milan's public transport network weigh in.
The 10 municipalities with the most old cars (Euro 0-3)
Share of cars in Euro 0-3 emission class out of the total (2023)
Old cars: the environmental divide runs along the country
Fleet quality is the other side of the coin. In Roccaforte del Greco, in the Aspromonte, 67.2 percent of circulating cars are in Euro 0-3 class, that is, largely registered before 2006; similar values in Verbicaro in the Cosenza area with 66.7 percent and in Staiti, also in the metropolitan city of Reggio Calabria, with 65.8. Accettura in Basilicata and Nicorvo in Lomellina also enter the ranking.
At the opposite extreme, Italy's most modern car fleets are precisely in the municipalities hosting rental fleets: in Scandicci only 1.5 percent of cars are Euro 0-3, in Trento 2.1, in Aosta 2.5. Even net of this effect, the picture is clear: where incomes are lower, cars are older, more polluting and less safe. The environmental divide of the circulating fleet is first of all an economic divide.
Cars in Rome, 2006-2023
Time series of cars registered in the municipality of Rome
Rome: the long slowdown and the restart
Rome's time series tells twenty years of Italians' relationship with the car. In 2006 the capital had 1,891,032 registered cars; the peak came in 2011 with 1,937,783, then the economic crisis and new mobility habits triggered a long descent to the low of 1,740,937 in 2021. From there the rebound: 1,823,155 cars in 2023, growing but still below 2006 levels.
With a motorization rate of 664 cars per 1,000 inhabitants, Rome remains one of the most motorized large European capitals, well above Milan, which stands at 515. Rome's fleet also counts 389,122 motorcycles and over 2.4 million total vehicles.
How to read this data
The vehicle fleet is a precious indicator precisely because it is imperfect: it measures registrations, not actual use. Read with the right caveats, from the leasing effect to pedestrian islands, it nonetheless tells a great deal about territories: wealth, available transport alternatives, population age and the speed of technological turnover. On DatiItalia you can explore the 2006-2023 time series of every Italian municipality.