Every time I've come to Tenerife I've always booked my car hire with Cicar with pickup and drop off at TFS or at their Puerto de Santigo office. This year I've done the same, but as you've said their prices are after going through the roof! €654.30 for an Opel Corsa or equivalent 28 days! That works out at it being over €23.37 per day? Last year, (Feb/March 2020) it worked out at around €11.50 per day! Over double the daily price! It's gone a bit ridiculous, alright?

The earth moved for us as well today, at 74 the wife said I was dreaming again

We are here at the moment we always book with Auto Reisen, everybodies prices have gone through the roof, we were informed because of the lockdown & further Covid restrictions the car hire companies disposed of a lot of cars. We would pick up a car for 3 days do all the heavy shopping & return it to the office in Fanabe, but they have shut that also. The minimum hire is now 1 week.

This may be true but looking how quite the roads are they will be getting rid of a lot more in the near future at these prices.

In general we do not see any difference in prices in the shops or restaurants.

Usually book my car rental through Auto Reisen, not particularly good cars but good enough for what I need.

Over the years I have used them umpteen times and always found them to be competitive (as can be confirmed usually by the queue of holidaymakers at their desk in arrivals)

My favoured car is one they have (had) lots of, a Citreon C3, previously paid circa £150 for just over 3 weeks, looking at their website now for the same period they now expect £718 !!!

Frankly their C3's are possibly not worth £700 to buy one, they are usually very hire mileage, and not all that well maintained with virtually all having some type of body damage dings, scraped and dents etc.  Anyone else found car hire to be problematic ?  a quick squint at other rental companies seems to indicate they are also trying to claw back what monies they have lost during the pandemic.  Usual reason given is that when there were no tourists, no-one wanted their cars, so many were sold off to raise funds and now the uk travel has opened up there is a problem of supply and demand

I think you could certainly use the non-lucrative visa once to stay more than 90 days once because you could start the procedure to become a resident and "then change your mind" and go home before 182 days.

But would you be able to get one every year, given you have bombed out of the first one?