Replacement Vehicles And Mobility.

The Third Cost Centre

The industry recognises three cost centres that sit outside the repair itself: towing, storage, and the vehicle the policyholder drives while their own is unavailable. The Insurance Council of Australia publishes the clearest itemisation of a motor claim dollar available from any national body. In its stated general pattern, repair labour and repair parts take 30% each, total loss 25%, legal and fraud 5%, glass 2.5%, towing 2.5%, and the rental car 5%. (Insurance Council of Australia, Motor Insurance Policy Paper, March 2025.)

Five per cent is a small share of a large number, and it is the share that behaves differently from all the others. Parts and labour are priced by the job. Total loss is priced by the vehicle. The replacement vehicle is priced by the day, which means it is not really a repair cost at all. It is a meter running against elapsed time, and the meter does not distinguish between a day spent repairing and a day spent waiting.

Length Of Rental Is The Industry's Public Clock

Enterprise Mobility publishes a quarterly length of rental figure for collision-related replacement rentals, split by whether the damaged vehicle was drivable. It is among the few operational duration measures in motor claims that is published openly, quarter after quarter, on a consistent basis.

For the second quarter of 2026 the United States average was 15.1 days, unchanged from the same quarter of 2025 and the first second-quarter comparison without a decrease since 2022. The split is where the structure shows: drivable claims averaged 14.1 days, non-drivable 20.7 days, and total loss claims 13.7 days. Alaska recorded the longest state average at 21.2 days overall and 30.6 days for non-drivable vehicles; North Dakota the shortest at 10.7 days. (Enterprise Mobility, US Length of Rental Q2 2026.)

The first quarter of 2026 gives the pre-pandemic comparison. The United States averaged 16.3 days and Canada 15.7 days. Against the first quarter of 2020, the United States was 3.1 days higher and Canada 3.0 days higher. (Enterprise Mobility, US and Canadian Length of Rental Q1 2026, as reported by Collision Repair Magazine, 8 May 2026.) Six years after the disruption that caused it, roughly three days per claim have not come back.

Rental Days Are Bought By Parts Delays

The link between the repair chain and the rental meter is visible in the data because the parties measuring each end publish alongside one another. In the third quarter of 2025 the overall median parts delivery time was 6.8 days, against 9.5 days in the same quarter of 2024, with the largest state improvements in Colorado at 3.3 days and California at 2.9 days. (Greg Horn, Chief Industry Relations Officer, PartsTrader, in Enterprise Mobility's US Length of Rental Q3 2025 report.) United States length of rental in the same quarter was 15.5 days, down from the prior year. (Enterprise Mobility, US Length of Rental Q3 2025.)

The same relationship runs in the other direction. By the second quarter of 2026, with median parts delivery times 0.7 days better year on year, non-drivable length of rental fell while drivable length of rental rose. (Greg Horn, PartsTrader, in Enterprise Mobility's US Length of Rental Q2 2026 report.) Parts supply moves the severe end of the book; the routine end is governed by something else.

Alternative parts supply is one lever repairers can pull without waiting on an OEM. Alternate parts reached 40.6% of replacement parts, against 38.3% a year earlier, described as less prone to delays and back orders than OEM parts and therefore faster through the shop. (Ryan Mandell, Vice President Strategy and Market Intelligence, Mitchell International, in Enterprise Mobility's US Length of Rental Q3 2025 report.)

Calibration Buys Rental Days Too

Keys-to-keys time rises with the number of calibrations a repair requires. Repairs with no calibration averaged 13 days, repairs with one averaged 15.5 days, and repairs with multiple calibrations exceeded 17 days. (CCC Intelligent Solutions, Q3 2025 Crash Course, as reported by Autobody News, 17 December 2025.)

The sequencing matters as much as the count. Of calibrations appearing on direct repair programme estimates in the third quarter of 2025, 48.5% were on the initial estimate and 51.5% arrived as supplements. (CCC Intelligent Solutions, Q4 2025 Crash Course, as reported by Autobody News, 17 December 2025.) A calibration that arrives as a supplement is an authorisation sought while the vehicle is already in the shop and the rental meter is already running. Across all repairable appraisals, 28.3% now include a calibration. (CCC Intelligent Solutions, Crash Course 2026, 31 March 2026. Note the different denominator from the direct repair figure above.)

Electric vehicles carry more of this work. Battery-electric vehicles averaged 1.70 calibrations per estimate in 2025, against 1.54 for combustion and 1.63 for hybrids. (Mitchell, Plugged-In: EV Collision Insights 2025 Year in Review, 19 February 2026.) The wider effect of the vehicle mix is set out here.

Where The Duration Cost Has Been Measured Directly

Australia has the most completely itemised public account of what duration does to a motor book. Average keys-to-keys repair time rose from 38.57 days in 2019 to 61.25 days in 2024, an increase of 58.06%, which the Insurance Council of Australia attributes to labour shortages and parts delays and links directly to higher rental car payouts. (Insurance Council of Australia, Motor Insurance Policy Paper, March 2025, from ICA analysis of member keys-to-keys data. The series peaks at 65.8 days in March 2023.)

The unit cost moved at the same time. Rental car prices in 2024 were 69.81% higher than in 2019. (Australian Bureau of Statistics, Producer Price Index, passenger car rental and hiring, cited by the Insurance Council of Australia, March 2025.) A longer hire at a higher daily rate compounds, and the compounding lands on the claim.

Towing and storage moved on the same trajectory. Across two insurers' data from 2012-13 to 2020-21, average towing costs rose 71.3% and average storage costs 66.5%, with accident storage rates in Queensland capable of exceeding three times the rate in other jurisdictions. (Insurance Council of Australia, March 2025.)

Regulators have responded with price caps rather than process change. In Western Australia, from 1 July 2026 the maximum light vehicle crash tow is $523.00 including GST, with a distance fee of $4.75 per kilometre beyond 50 kilometres and a one-off after-hours surcharge of $149.00. Secure-yard storage is capped at $27.00 per day for a car and $13.50 for a motorcycle, with a one-off administration fee of $95.00. Overcharging carries penalties up to $12,000 for individuals and $60,000 for bodies corporate. (Department of Transport, Western Australia, capped fees and maximum charges, effective 1 July 2026. Australian dollars.) The Australian market is set out in full here.

Credit Hire: A Market That Exists Because The Wait Exists

Where a non-fault party is entitled to a replacement vehicle and the at-fault insurer is not providing one, a separate industry supplies the vehicle and recovers the cost afterwards. The United Kingdom has the most developed version, governed by the General Terms of Agreement, which originated with the Association of British Insurers in 1999 and sets maximum daily rates by vehicle group along with procedural standards. The current wording is dated 16 March 2026. (GTA Technical Committee, General Terms of Agreement, wording dated 16 March 2026.)

Duration is the dominant variable here as well. Average hire duration on settled accident-year claims fell to 32 days in 2025 from 34 days in 2024, and average hire cost fell from £2,906 to £2,640. Total loss claims handled outside the GTA averaged 41 days, down from 46. Of the savings achieved on non-GTA claims, 86% came from challenging the rate and 14% from reducing the duration. (Keoghs, Credit Hire Benchmarking Review 2026, 19 May 2026. Defendant-side insurer panel data; pounds sterling.)

The hire side of the market reads the rate trend differently. GTA maximum daily rates rose 5.78% on average over the decade to 2024, equivalent to 0.56% a year, against UK inflation averaging 2.6% a year over the same period; a Renault Megane in class S4 moved from £41 a day in 2014 to £50 in 2024, so a ten-day repair moved from £410 to £500. (Research commissioned by The Credit Hire Organisation, 6 May 2025.)

Both accounts can be true at once, and the arithmetic in the second one is the point worth carrying. If the daily rate is close to flat in real terms, then the movement in the total is duration. A ten-day repair and a thirty-two-day hire are the same claim seen from two sides of the same delay.

The structure travels. In Australia, settlement claims involving credit hire and accident management companies rose approximately 400% between 2019 and 2022, with average settlement demands three times higher than claims not involving them. (Insurance Council of Australia, March 2025, from ICA analysis of member claims and settlements data.)

Provision Is A Conduct Obligation, Not A Courtesy

The replacement vehicle is also a service promise, and ombud schemes treat it as one. The United Kingdom's Financial Ombudsman Service lists the failure to provide a replacement vehicle as a named category of motor complaint, and sets out positions that bear directly on how repair delay is handled. (Financial Ombudsman Service, vehicle repairs guidance, last updated 16 September 2026.)

• Parts before booking. Where a vehicle remained legally safe to drive, the Service expects the insurer to have ensured parts were available before booking the vehicle in; where that did not happen and the policyholder lost use of the vehicle for longer than expected, it will consider compensation for loss of use.
• Mitigation during delay. Where delay is unreasonable, the Service asks what the insurer did to reduce the inconvenience, and whether a replacement vehicle was offered is part of that question.
• Self-hire. Where a policyholder hired a vehicle themselves, the Service may require the insurer to meet the cost if the policyholder acted reasonably, hired a like-for-like vehicle, and paid a price in line with standard commercial rates.
• Class matching. Most policies do not promise an equivalent make and model, and the Service will normally find a smaller replacement reasonable where that is what the policy provides. It has upheld complaints where the policyholder had specific needs, such as disability modifications, or had purchased enhanced replacement vehicle cover.

Taken together these define the exposure. An insurer that cannot compress the wait can still be required to fund mobility through it, and can be found at fault for not having done so.

The Replacement Fleet Is Not Neutral Either

The vehicle supplied has its own economics. Battery-electric vehicles carried an average repairable severity of $6,395 in the United States in 2025 against $5,105 for combustion vehicles, and 3.07% of United States repairable claims and 4.77% of Canadian ones involved a battery-electric vehicle. (Mitchell, Plugged-In: EV Collision Insights 2025 Year in Review, 19 February 2026. US and Canadian dollars respectively.) As the damaged parc electrifies, class matching becomes a question about charging access and range as well as about size.

No published dataset was found covering electric replacement vehicle fleet availability or class matching of electric replacements. The gaps in the public record are listed with the sources.

Why This Sits At The Centre Rather Than The Edge

Storage accrues daily. Replacement vehicle accrues daily. Credit hire exists because the wait exists, and its cost is dominated by duration rather than rate. Loss adjustment expense accrues per touch, and slow files attract touches. Every one of these is a function of the same variable.

An insurer negotiating a better daily rate is working on a number that moved 5.78% in a decade. The number that moved 58% in five years is the number of days. (Rate: The Credit Hire Organisation, 6 May 2025. Duration: Insurance Council of Australia, March 2025.)