Torino to Lyon - better option than driving?

Part of the expense is probably renting the car in Italy and dropping it in France. To maintain your current itinerary, you could use buses for your transport in Italy, including from Aosta to Chamonix. You won't be able to make the Fenis Castle stop you mention in your other thread, but if you are really committed to that you could backtrack from Aosta by local bus or with a single day rental car. You could also rent a car in Torino for the drive to Aosta and then use the bus to get from Aosta to Chamonix.

then rent a car to drive between Torino and Lyon before taking the TGV from Lyon to Paris.

I can’t imagine that hiring an Italian car and leaving it in France will be a cheap option.

this is a duplicate of another thread.

I appreciate the responses. It's definitely not cheap to rent a car in Italy and return it in France, which is why I'm looking for help! I'll be traveling with 4 others in my family, which slightly complicate the logistics of moving around with baggage, but also might soften the blow somewhat from renting a car since it'll be transporting 5 people. The option of buses from Torino to Aosta and Aosta to Chamonix (then Chamonix to Megeve) seem relatively straightforward, but it looks like we'd need to transfer at Sallanches to get from Megeve to Annecy. My concern is that we'd end up wasting much of that day waiting at bus stations when we're trying to squeeze a lot into a relatively short trip.