Fleet Europe °110 by Nexus Communication

110 10/2019

FOR INTERNATIONAL FLEET & MOBILITY LEADERS

TRENDS @ THE SUMMIT Alain Van Groenendael, Arval Olivier Reppert, ShareNow

Alessandro Coppo, eBay Classifieds Group

Nexus communication - Fleet Europe #110 - Periodic magazine - OCTOBER 2019 - Deposit Office X

THE 3 GAME CHANGERS FOR OUR INDUSTRY COMMENTED BY 9 TOP EXECUTIVES Etienne Hermite, NAVYA

• Artificial Intelligence • Electrification

• Smart Mobility Solutions

Michiel van Ratingen, Euro NCAP

EXCLUSIVE

Fleet Europe Awards winners: what have they become? Sampo Hietanen, MaaS Global

Neil Cawse, Geotab

Olivier de Clercq, Parkd

CONNECTED FLEETS CONFERENCE

Adam Woolway, Plugsurfing

BRUSSELS 28 & 29 JANUARY 2020 http://conference-fleeteurope.com

FLEET EUROPE SUMMIT 5-38

20 In the industry The Fleet Europe Summit on 6 and 7 November in Estoril gathers all major stakeholders in the fleet and mobility ecosystem. Who’s new in the industry?

Fleet Europe Summit 2019 Since years the Fleet Europe Summit is the number 1 conference for fleet and mobility decision makers with an international scope.

29 10 Q&As about the Start-Up of the Year 2019 Are you excited to know who will grab the award in 2019? Here are 10 things you should know about the contest.

33 10 Start-ups to watch out for in 2020 The big automotive players are still at the steering wheel but they can no longer ignore several start-ups that are attempting to lead the mobility way.

36 What fleet can learn from others

9 10 Fleet priorities for 2020 It’s the right time to look ahead and analyse the trends that will define the fleet and mobility industries in the upcoming months and years.

No industry is an island, and the fleet and mobility sectors, too, can - and do - learn from other business players.

38 IFMI Masterclass: balance fleet strategies and employee needs The IFMI is a must-attend for fleet and mobility managers that want to stay up to speed about trends impacting their programme.

16 9 Game-changers for the mobility ecosystem Nine top executives explain what, in their expert opinion, will be the game-changers of our fleet and mobility ecosystem.

22 Fleet Europe Awards winners look back The Fleet Europe Awards have a lasting effect on lives and careers of those who are rewarded, as previous winners explain.

COLOPHON SALES: David Baudeweyns, Elke Leën, Daniel Savigny, Sven Van Rossum, Aline Verpoorten

FLEET EUROPE #110

CHIEF EDITOR: Steven Schoefs PROJECT COORDINATOR: Céline Gilson EDITORS: Benjamin Uyttebroeck, Dieter Quartier, Yves Helven, Frank Jacobs, Fien Van den Steen

MARKETING: Vincent Degives, Virginie Emonts, Benoit Delisse

CONTRIBUTORS: Stijn Blanckaert, Daniel Bland, Shane Curran, Tim Harrup, Jonathan Manning, Alison Pittaway, Mark Sutcliffe

PICTURES: ©Shutterstock

PUBLISHERS: Caroline Thonnon, Thierry Degives LAYOUT: Cible - www.cible.be

TO CONTACT OUR TEAM: FirstletterfirstnameLastname@nexuscommunication.be 2

NEW ENERGIES 46

After the optimism, time for realism Even if BEVs are performing well in Europe, there is growing scepticism about the feasibility of a mass transition to batteryelectric vehicles. Time to confront the 5 major boosters with the 5 most challenging obstacles.

MAAS

26 Start-up of the Year, start of success Taking part in the Start-Up of the Year Award can have serious consequences, luckily for the good, as previous winners tell.

Follow the easy guide to mobility Unfortunately, there is no easy guide to mobility. Here are, nonetheless, a few tips if you’re planning to implement mobility solutions.

Why mobility subscriptions are fit for the corporate client One of the reasons for the lack of general adoption of mobility is the fact that mobility providers cater for consumers, rather than for corporate clients. Can subscription models overcome the limitations of a consumer product?

CONNECTED

41 Electrification pays off, but it’s no easy feat Electrification is a key topic at this year’s Summit: Fleet managers from SAP, Vattenfall, Addison Lee Group and Cisco explain why they decided to go electric.

AI, an EV’s real fuel Now that plenty more EVs are about to roam our European streets, we must ensure that we make optimum use of them. That’s where artificial intelligence comes in.

Your new personal assistant: AI To learn more about Artificial Intelligence at use in fleet management, we meet AI wizard Ovi Radu of OviDrive.

REMARKETING 60

New rules reshape the remarketing game The Fleet Europe Remarketing Board members, closely involved in building and developing the 2019 Remarketing Forum programme, explain what makes each session worth your while.

We also focus on these channels on our website. Read all these selected articles here:

50 Getting around smartly How do you get from A to B? Here’s a small sample of how both suppliers and customers are getting around in new and surprising ways.

54 Is AI the next game changer for congestion? Congestion is shaping as the biggest hurdle for the fleet manager to overcome in the next few years. To solve this problem, AI has a major role to play.

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FLEET EUROPE

www.fleeteurope.com • Fleet Europe Magazine • @Fleet_Europe • FleetEurope • contact@nexuscommunication.be Fleet Europe is published by Nexus Communication SA - Parc Artisanal 11-13, B-4671 Barchon (Belgium) - T +32 4 387 87 71 - Fax +32 4 387 90 63 Fleet Europe is registered and copyrighted trademark. Reproduction rights (texts, advertisements, pictures) reserved for all countries. Received documents will not be returned. By submitting them, the author implicitly authorizes their publication.

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SUMMIT

SUMMIT 2019: SO MUCH TO LEARN AND DO Steven Schoefs and Frank Jacobs

So much to learn and do. How to pick and choose? Steven Schoefs, Editor in Chief of Fleet Europe, gives us his personal tour of the many, varied events at the Fleet Europe Summit 2019.

“Spread out over two days, the Fleet Europe Summit 2019 offers so many opportunities to learn and do that it may seem a bit bewildering at first.” “All events are rich in content and opportunity, each has a unique message. To ensure your Summit’s success, it’s important to pick the ones that best fit your interests and requirements.”

“My name is Steven Schoefs. I’m Chief Editor at Fleet Europe, the publisher of this magazine and organiser of the Fleet Europe Summit. I’ll be having a very busy couple of days, so I’m sure our paths will cross at some point.” “Let me give you an overview of what I’ll be doing – and what I’ll be missing – so you get a better idea of what there is to choose from. Happy Summiteering!”

“As a warm-up for the Fleet Europe Summit, two related events will take place in Estoril the day ahead of its official start. Both are members-only. If you’re interested: both organisations are happy to accept new members.”

6:30 pm: Global Fleet Managers Club

“As has become traditional, the European Car Remarketing Association – CARA for short – will hold a General Assembly a day before the Remarketing Forum. In a few short years, CARA has become the indispensable forum for remarketeers to find and promote solutions to cross-border remarketing issues.”

“In the evening I’ll be attending the Global Fleet Managers Club. The GFMC is a recurring event, an informal forum to discuss pressing issues among high-level fleet professionals with regional or global responsibilities. Lots to learn. And lots of fun.”

FLEET EUROPE #110

1:00 pm: CARA General Assembly

SUMMIT

“Things get busy right off the bat, with the Remarketing Forum, IFMI and our Test Drives all kicking off before noon. The Summit really gets under way after lunch, with the opening of the Fleet Europe Village, including the Smart Mobility Area.”

8.00 am: Remarketing Forum

8.30 am: IFMI

“No late night for me at the GFMC, because I’ll be up early the next day to host the Remarketing Forum. An all-day event, it’ll give me the opportunity to deepen my understanding of this increasingly important – and increasingly international – aspect of TCO management.”

“That means that unlike previous years, I won’t be sitting in with the International Fleet Managers Institute – another great all-day learning event filled with presentations, workshops and networking opportunities.”

For more info on the Remarketing Forum programme, see p. 60

For more info on the IFMI programme, see p. 38

10.00 am: Test Drive

As of 24 September, the following (PH)EVs have been confirmed for the Test Drive:

“Perhaps I’ll manage to squeeze in a Test Drive with one of the electric cars; it’s a great way to experience new tech first-hand. A popular item last year, our Test Drive has been significantly expanded to include not just full EVs but also PHEVs and ‘classic’ hybrids.”

• DS3 Crossback E-Tense, • DS7 Crossback E-Tense, • Hyundai Kona Electric, • Hyundai Ioniq Electric, • Jaguar I-Pace, • Kia e-Niro, • Kia e-Soul, • Nissan Leaf, • Nissan e-NV200, • Tesla Model 3.

NEW! The Test Drives are now open to all attendees of the Fleet Europe Summit

2:30 pm: Fleet Europe Village

NEW!

“In the afternoon, the Fleet Europe Village opens its doors. This popular segment is now open for longer, giving me plenty of time later to browse the almost 50 booths and meet and greet fellow fleet professionals.”

FLEET EUROPE #110

3:00 pm: Start-up of the Year and Innovation Awards Pitches

The Fleet Europe Village is now open for two days instead of one.

7:30 pm: Remarketing Awards Ceremony and Dinner “Following a full day focusing on Remarketing, it’s time for some relaxing. Underscoring the importance of the topic, Remarketing not only has its own Forum, but also its own Awards Ceremony and Gala Dinner.”

“Soon after the Village opens, the startups who make up the Smart Mobility section of the Village will be pitching their candidacy for the Smart Mobility Start-up of the Year Award. And there’ll be pitches for the Fleet Europe Innovation Award. All in all, a fascinating ‘speed-date’ with the future of mobility. I’ll definitely try to catch a few of the presentations today – but there’s also tomorrow.”

“Second day of the Summit, second day of the Village, where I’ll be spending most of my time today – focusing on disruptors, on the continuing pitches for the Start-up Award, and on the CEOs I’ll be talking to during the Main Stage Sessions.”

9.00 am: Start-up Café

9.00 am: Main Stage Sessions

“You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. The start-up Café focuses on the egg-breakers. I wish I could sit in, but just after this event kicks off, I’m opening the Main Stage Sessions.”

“In the Main Stage Sessions, we’ll focus on big themes, with big names as speakers. I’m looking forward to hearing Miguel Gaspar, Lisbon’s Deputy Mayor, speak about his city’s innovative mobility approach; Olivier Reppert and Sampo Hietanen – CEOs of ShareNow and MaaS Global, about carsharing and mobility-as-a-service; Marco Lessacher and Alain Van Groenendael, CEOs of Alphabet and Arval, about fleet electrification. After each segment – there’ll also be one on AI – I’ll go a little bit deeper into things with the speakers, and there’ll be time for Q&As with the audience.”

9:30 am: Smart Mobility Talks “The Smart Mobility Village is also where you’ll be able to catch various speakers on a wide range of topics – all focused on how Smart Mobility can (and will) change the way we get from A to B, and how that will impact business models and bottom lines.” Three talks, on micromobility and safety; MaaS in a corporate context; and practical applications of autonomous technology, will alternate with the Main Stage Sessions.

1:45 pm: Corporate Side Presentations

5:00 pm: Innovation and Start-up Awards

“Dovetailing with the Main Stage Sessions, there’ll be a choice selection of five Corporate Side Presentations, in which partners and sponsors will be sharing the nitty-gritty on their products and services.”

“Before the big ceremony later that evening, the first prizes of the day will be ceremoniously awarded to the winners of the Innovation and Start-up Awards, in the Fleet Europe Village.”

7.30 pm: Awards Ceremony “After work, it’s time for play. Closing the Summit are the annual Awards Ceremony, a splendid, splashy celebration of the persons and products in Europe’s fleet industry that deserve praise and recognition this year. The gala event, at Estoril Casino, includes, of course, a well-deserved gala dinner.”

11:00 pm: After-party For a complete overview of the Fleet Europe Summit, find all the info you need at summit.fleeteurope.com.

NEW! All the participants will also be able to download the official event app. An indispensable tool to notify you of the next sessions to attend!

FLEET EUROPE #110

“No Summit is complete without its after party, this year supported by Sixt SE. It’s a time to put all those theories about innovative mobility in practice on the dance floor. Be there or be square!”

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FLEET EUROPE #110

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SUMMIT

FLEET PRIORITIES FOR 2020 Yves Helven, Frank Jacobs, Jonathan Manning, Dieter Quartier, Benjamin Uyttebroeck, Fien Van den Steen

A couple of months from the start of the new year, it’s a good time to look ahead and analyse the trends that will define the fleet and mobility industries in the following months and years. Below is a list of priorities for each of the Fleet Europe channels.

Electric cars are finally within reach of all with the launch of affordable EVs like Volkswagen’s ID3. Coupled with new connectivity services and artificial intelligence, they could shake up the fleet landscape completely.

Once you’ve picked your financial model, you can focus on the vehicle and its powertrain. Electric cars have been around for some time but their market share remains very small. Even in a leading EV nation like Norway, the share of electric vehicles for the whole fleet struggles to pass the 15% mark.

B and C segment EVs Things could start to shift more quickly in 2020 – the year in which several OEMs will finally launch B and C segment electric cars that promise to be affordable. Expect electric cars to spread across your entire fleet.

As cash allowances and personal leasing are being offered as alternatives to company cars, more employees have taken to using their personal car for business-related trips. Nevertheless, legislation often specifies that health and safety laws apply to work activities on the road in the same way as it does to any other work activities. A company’s travel and transport policies should reflect that.

Don’t go anywhere Commuting to work is no longer limited to cars, particularly to one car per employee. Rising taxation, city bans, high parking costs and employees that don’t want to be stuck in traffic and prefer alternatives - they all point in the same direction. Getting to your destination is what counts, the means to get there can and need to be flexible.

The ultimate mobility solution is not going anywhere at all. Indeed, offering home working solutions, limiting business trips and working in co-working spaces can also fit into a modern mobility policy. If there’s only one of these 10 priorities that you take into account, let it be the last one: be disruptive. Today’s dominating employee mobility models are no longer sustainable in the long run but fortunately, they don’t need to. Legislation, taxation, user expectations and technology are heralding changes in mobility that you shouldn’t hesitate to implement. FLEET EUROPE #110

Operating lease has been the strategy of choice for most large corporate fleets since time immemorial. As artificial intelligence (AI) and pay-per-use models are gaining traction, it is time for fleet and mobility managers to reconsider the default option.

SUMMIT

models: Competition 1 Financial for operating lease The impact of IFRS16 on the preferred finance methodologies of corporate fleet clients today is fairly limited, but it will become more substantial over the next years. Two trends will gradually add alternatives to long-term operating lease as the only solution: AI and subscription or pay-per-use based services. The main obstacle for full unbundling is still the additional workload for fleet operators and the management of complex supply stacks. AI is bound to assist fleet operators automate repetitive work, such as invoice control and work order approval processes. In a world where unbundling becomes manageable, finance lease, renting and credit lines will reappear, and so will a new RV guarantee business. Subscription-based models and pay-per-use models are gaining traction, especially with fleet managers that are focusing on asset utilisation or tax optimisation. Once the potential of bonus agreement or discount deals is exhausted, which is the place many corporate fleets are in right now, the only remaining savings potential is maximising asset utilisation. Inevitably, this results in new fleet models, such as fully pooled fleets. Tax regulations also push fleet managers in this direction, as dedicated cars are being targeted.

FLEET EUROPE #110

Energies: Order your EVs, 2 New upgrade your infrastructure Battery-electric vehicles are no longer the privilege of managers in their Teslas, Audis or Jaguars. Following in the footsteps of Hyundai, Kia and Nissan, the mainstream European OEMs have launched more affordable long-range alternatives for conventional B and C segment hatchbacks and crossovers. The model offer will keep on expanding in 2020, making EVs accessible to a larger crowd.

At the same time, more European countries facilitate the adoption of electric vehicles financially and practically by providing incentives and increasing the public charging network. While demand for EVs increases, battery supplies and production volumes remain limited, causing long delivery times. If you plan on going electric or increasing your EV fleet, you had better not postpone those negotiations. And there is another priority in the New Energies department. Getting your hands on sufficient EVs is one thing, being able to charge them at the compound or office car park is another. You may have to upgrade your electrical infrastructure – a cost not to be underestimated if you’re talking about new distribution lines and/or substations.

A policy for grey fleet 3 Safety: drivers The development of cash allowances and personal leasing as alternatives to company cars presents a safety challenge to fleets. In many jurisdictions, employers have a duty of care towards all employees who drive for work, whether making deliveries or visiting clients, even if drivers use their own private cars.

Rob Ingram, director of business rental for Europe at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, said: “We would advise all European businesses with employees that drive their own vehicles for work to ensure their travel and transport policies cover areas such as vehicle maintenance and routine checks for personal vehicles used for business travel.”

It’s not about 4 Autonomous: self-driving (yet) A recent MIT survey found that 23% of respondents believe self-driving vehicles are available for purchase today. Nothing could be further from the truth. Today, some cars reach between level 2 and 3 autonomy but we’re still a few decades away from full autonomy, which is level 5. Driving this point home isn’t made easier by OEMs like Tesla calling their drive assistance systems Autopilot. Full autonomy is already possible in limited and controlled areas. University or company campuses are ideal locations for these early autonomous applications, often in the shape of small shuttle buses. In these conditions, technology well below level 5 can suffice to make self-driving a reality already today.

For example, the UK’s Health and Safety Executive’s Driving at Work guidelines declare that “health and safety law applies to work activities on the road in the same way as it does to all work activities,” says Allianz. As a result, employers need to manage the risks to drivers as part of their health and safety arrangements, said the insurer. But ‘grey fleet’ drivers who use their own cars for business trips make it more difficult for employers:

However, the safety systems used by these limited self-driving vehicles can already be used in human-driven vehicles today. Lane keep assist, adaptive cruise control, blind spot monitors, even rain sensors are all systems self-driving vehicles will rely on and human drivers can already benefit from. So don’t hold your breath for the first fully autonomous cars to enter your fleet. Instead, look at ADAS systems and include the ones that are available to make your fleet safer and to help your drivers get home safely every day.

• to maintain control over licence checks; • to check a car is insured for business use; • to verify a car is properly maintained; • to ensure compliance with a driving behaviour policy.

Prepare for 5G and 5 Connected: blockchain

In the Driving for Better Business Leadership report, published in July,

Even if you are not implementing telematics in 2020, your vehicles will be connected and exchange data. In fact,

From operational and finance leasing to flexible leasing, private leasing, subscription based leasing, and used car lease models

Financial Model

Shared Mobility

Remarketing

The evolution to autonomous tech and self-driving vehicles and the implementation of these vehicles

Driver safety management, insurance and risk management and vehicle safety

The rise of ridehailing, carsharing and carpooling and the implementation in a corporate set-up with new fleet-owners arising

New Energies

Autonomous

FOR INTERNATIONAL FLEET & MOBILITY LEADERS

Safety

Connected

Last Mile M ile

MaaS M aaS

With 5G, which will first be available in large metropolitan areas and gradually spread from there, data can be exchanged at a rate of up to 10Gbps. Also, latency is reduced from half a second to just 10 milliseconds – a sine qua non for autonomous vehicles to operate safely. Self-driving cars won’t roam public roads before the mid-2020s – at least not in Europe. Still, already next year will 5G facilitate carsharing, vehicle subscription schemes and pool cars in corporate fleets. Smartphones will replace keys and cloud-based driver profiles allow drivers to switch cars seamlessly. 5G increases capacity and wakens up the internet of things, whereas decentralised blockchains can provide a level of security and frictionless identification unmatched by the existing centralised infrastructure.

Connectivity lead to an increased amount of data; telematics can be a solution for driver behaviour and safety but what with data privacy and vehicle security

Last mile mobility with the transportation of people and goods in an efficient way in cities, taking into account regulation, urbanisation and employee productivity

Integrated mobility, door to door mobility with mobility budget approach and smart mobility platforms

your drivers will be able to perform transactions aboard their cars, both in the realm of the automotive and non-automotive industry, both for mobility-related purchases and personal entertainment. There are two key enablers: 5G and blockchain.

From petrol and diesel to hybrid, electric, charging infrastructure and the impact of WLTP

Indeed, the time has come to get familiar with these technologies.

than the human eye can spot? “Yes, because there’s a difference between fair and unfair wear and tear. The rules establishing fairness of damage are set beforehand and are separate from the precision of the reports.”

What is possible, albeit probably on a slightly longer term, is that the objective precision of the automated damage recognition systems generates a points-based system, which will punish or reward drivers for the state in which they hand in their vehicle. “Driver behaviour will become a lot more actionable,” Mr Verbois concludes.

Remarketing: Minor damages reporting

For now, vehicle inspections are done by humans. They are fallible, and subjective. According to internal reports by inspection specialists, this accounts for a variation in damage reporting of up to 40%. From 2020, fully automated, entirely digital inspection systems will start to take over, and this will change dramatically. Damage reports will become much more detailed, the margin of error will be virtually wiped out. How will that impact fleet managers - and company car drivers? “Eliminating differences in inspection quality will remove uncertainty and ultimately that’s a plus for both fleet managers and drivers,” says independent remarketing expert Johan Verbois. Even if those digital systems mercilessly register smaller defects

mile: Don’t let a LEZ stop 7 Last you

Entering city centres with older, more polluting vehicles is already banned in many places, particularly for diesel vehicles. More bans will be put in place in the following years. So how do you ensure your delivery drivers and your technicians can still enter cities?

FLEET EUROPE #110

The end of contract management of the fleet, residual value evaluation and reselling the vehicles

SUMMIT

The mobility mantra today is to go electric, and that’s finally an option for LCV fleets. Choice is still limited, but it is growing. Recently, the dedicated electric LCV manufacturer StreetScooter delivered its 10,000th vehicle to DHL, evidence it is now a mainstream option that can be deployed for large fleets. Traditional OEMs have also launched or announced electric vans and some have developed electric refrigerated vans. For many applications, the limited range today’s electric vans offer is an issue. The fleet may need to be organised in an electric fleet for urban driving and a non-electric fleet for longer distances. Installing charging infrastructure for large fleets is also less straightforward than putting up a charging pole for one vehicle. Another way to remain mobile in city centres, is to embrace alternatives to LCVs or cars. Cargo bikes can be used to get parcels to their destination, and technicians can transport their tools and some spare parts in them.

mobility: Sharing is 8 Shared the new owning

FLEET EUROPE #110

Carsharing has various benefits for fleet managers and employees. Firstly, sharing vehicles increases the usagerate of each vehicle and optimises your fleet costs. A study of Transport & Environment (2017) shows how one shared car can replace 5 to 15 privately used cars, since the average car is unused 90% of the time. Furthermore, traffic congestion costs the EU economy about ¤100 billion per year, yet ride and carsharing can offer a solution by reducing the numbers of vehicles on the road. Before you go for shared mobility, you need to tackle two major hurdles. On the technical side, cars need sharing hardware to allow keyless entry. Next, you should enable a flexible reservation system to ensure that vehicles are there when needed. An important aspect is behaviour, as employees need to get used to the idea of having vehicles for shorter periods of time and returning them to the pool when done.

One way to get started is to cooperate with a local carsharing provider, another is to cooperate with a carsharing platform provider who can convert your own fleet into a shared one (partly or entirely). The first option is easier in terms of vehicle availability, the second in terms of management.

9 MaaS & Commuting policies

The time has come for companies to take care of their employees’ commuting needs, especially those employees who come to work by car. Congestion, city bans, congestion taxes and high parking costs make it not only time consuming but also expensive for employees to do their job. In addition, employees are subject to increasing stress levels, which impacts their productivity. Commuting policies are for most companies limited to the statutory minimum, i.e. what legislation prescribes. This benefit is however not equal across Europe and even non-existing in some countries. Today’s employees have become better informed and therefore more critical with regards to their benefit packages. Younger generations in particular have high expectations of their employers and need a different level of care. Commuting policies typically fund public transport and micro-mobility for the transit between home and office. Although perceived as expensive, the benefits are worth it: not only do commuting policies provide for a more motivated employee, they also reduce the number of cars on the road and eventually, congestion and parking shortages. Finally, it makes employers look good, which has a positive impact on recruitment and retention.

manager’s role: 10 Fleet be disruptive

The final priority, more a piece of advice, is to be creative and disruptive. The current one-employee-one-car 12

model is no longer sustainable as it doesn’t offer any tools to cope with congestion, taxation and public opinion. In addition, as AI, blockchain and digitisation make their entry into your company’s business model, the mobility needs of your employees are changing, or will do so very soon. The job today is to create a vision of what your fleet should look like tomorrow. Think technology first: are you still managing your fleet in spreadsheets or databases or even worse, paying someone to do it for you? Why not implement some of the amazing and affordable tech that is available today? Connect your vehicles. Moving forward you will have to focus on asset utilisation and usage rates of 30% or less will become unacceptable for your employers. Connected vehicles will provide you with data to make the right decisions in terms of eligibility, electrification and the need for additional mobility solutions. Implement flexible models and become your own mobility provider: maximise the utilisation by turning your car fleet into a shared fleet, think about flexible office space, provide micro-mobility solutions for in-city traffic. The company car is far from becoming obsolete, but the rigid link between the car and the employee is an obstacle that needs to be overcome. Therefore, be disruptive and creative. It’ll pay off.

Stay up to speed about what’s happening in fleet and mobility. Check our website www.fleeteurope.com to learn about the latest trends, developments and evolutions.

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SUMMIT

ON 9 GAME-CHANGERS FOR MOBILITY Frank Jacobs

Where does mobility go from here? That’s a big question, so let’s break it down. We’ve asked nine top executives – one for each of the channels that make up the mobility ecosystem – what, in their expert opinion, will be the game-changers of the future.

CONNECTED

Neil Cawse, CEO, Geotab

Connected Mobility will be dominated by the conflict between privacy of people’s data and the urge to create new and interesting services from it. We just got back from China, where there’s very little control over data use, and not much privacy. We must find a balance between the right to privacy and the good that Big Data can do for society. We can do many interesting things with data now that simply couldn’t be done before, because it requires so much brainpower to process. For example, analysing a long video stream for certain types of behaviour, or tracking a cellphone. Now that we have made huge strides in machine learning, these hard tasks are done by machines, at a massive scale. This generates new, powerful capabilities, which can be used for good or bad. So, we face a choice: will we use video, data, machine learning and Big Data to control society, or to make society safer and better?

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AUTONOMOUS At NAVYA, we feel the single biggest element to impact the future of autonomous mobility will be the wide-scale rollout of 5G service. With the advent of 5G, data transmission speeds will increase significantly compared to the current system, and latency will be reduced. As a result, the connectivity of automated and fully autonomous vehicles will be greatly improved. Vehicles such as NAVYA’s Autonom Shuttle will be able to offer its customers three improvements: broader route options, with increased real-time mapping abilities; an enhanced Cellular Vehicle to Everything (CV2X) communications platform, which will positively affect everything from on-board safety to infotainment systems; and a smoother, more enjoyable version of the entire AV transportation experience.

Etienne Hermite, CEO, NAVYA

SHARED MOBILITY Cars have brought people freedom and independence to travel â&#x20AC;&#x201C; where they want, whenever they want. But in big cities, we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t experience this freedom anymore, because too many cars have led to congestion, air pollution and parking problems. That is why people are starting to understand that they can have the same freedom without having to own a car. They can easily share the car. So, the short answer to the question is: shared mobility is the future because you can have independence without the burdens of ownership. And more and more people are realising that.

Olivier Reppert, CEO, ShareNow

REMARKETING Remarketing is affected by several market trends, such as innovative mobility solutions and a growing variety of mobility assets. Today, many companies provide their employees with conventional cars, electric cars, e-bikes or even scooters. More than ever, fleet owners need to look for highly efficient sales channels with the potential to remarket a broad inventory range. In this context, B2C models will gain significant importance. The classifieds businesses can play a crucial role in this.

Alessandro Coppo, Senior Vice President and General Manager, eBay Classifieds Group

SAFETY

Michiel van Ratingen, Secretary General Euro NCAP

Automated driving will reduce the number of road crashes caused by human error and will be a key mode of transport in the mobility ecosystem of the future. However, until autonomous-drive technology is sufficiently safe and economically viable, driver-assist technologies will continue to advance and spread in the marketplace. As ADAS proliferation continues, future car models are expected to deliver greater levels of safety to those behind the wheel and also offer more protection to other road users such as pedestrians, cyclists and powered two-wheelers. In the future, autonomous drive operated within smart, connected infrastructure will bring us a step closer to realising Vision Zero: a mobility ecosystem in which the number of traffic fatalities is close to zero.

Adam Woolway, Co-founder & MD, Plugsurfing

How do we get to a level of cooperation between industry stakeholders that allows us to get EV-industry business models off the ground? That is one of the biggest challenges for the mobility sector. A majority of the businesses involved, whether infrastructure providers, automotive companies or software providers, develop their products for more than just economic reasons. Environmental, political and ideological arguments all play a part. This means that companies are ready to suffer losses for a long-term re-imagining of mobility. The pressure of having so many middlemen in the industry exacerbates the low profit margins across the board. The volume of EV customers increases yearly, but is still too low to support the investments made by industry actors to meet high consumer expectations. The challenge to resolve this race between the middlemen will likely be resolved by finding ways to shape the industry in symbiosis rather than antagonism. This will determine the future of the EV industry, for investors and consumers alike.

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NEW ENERGIES

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FINANCIAL MODELS The rise of e-mobility and on-demand mobility increases the already strong need for solid partnerships between different market players. This is because none of the companies in the mobility ecosystem is yet able to address all mobility needs on its own. That would include infrastructure, charging stations, multimodal solutions, dedicated apps, etcetera. So, the real challenge today is fully integrated mobility.

Alain Van Groenendael, CEO, Arval

However, traditional full-service leasing companies have always been at the heart of the mobility ecosystem, through their hold on the main asset of mobility: cars. They are now gaining more and more ground in the mobility value chain, by providing their customers with an extended range of mobility solutions and by creating new mobility platforms. Thanks to partnerships, they are completely reinventing their business to adapt to this new mobility world and better answer clients’ needs.

MaaS “In my opinion, the most important element will be trust in the ecosystem. For the end user, trust means having the guarantee of at least the same level of freedom as car ownership provides now. So, consumers must be able to trust their MaaS operator to handle all their rides for at least a year. For the transportation service providers, trust is needed to enable the build-up of MaaS services. User trust can only be guaranteed when all providers are on board. Trust needs to work also within wider society, so MaaS services can be counted on to help with transport and sustainability policy goals. In short: trust is the new oil.”

Sampo Hietanen, CEO, MaaS Global

LAST MILE “The adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) in the mobility ecosystem will be crucial. It will allow more data to be harvested, and that will increase and optimalise the supply and demand for MaaS platforms and providers – ultimately also benefiting Last Mile.” “As we shift from car ownership to car usage via MaaS, drivers still expect the same level of comfort; about where and when to depart, which entertainment system to use, how to park as close as possible to their final destination, etcetera. MaaS platforms and providers are still struggling to seamlessly connect demand and supply to each other. Integrated into the mobility ecosystem, IoT could increase efficiency by highlighting the most convenient traffic routes, systems and modes. As a result, MaaS platforms and providers would be able to provide an even smoother and cheaper transport option than the one provided by your own car.”

Olivier de Clercq, CEO, Parkd

“At Parkd, we find our clients – mostly bigger fleets with at least 100 cars – want to reduce fleet sizes and increase MaaS and mobility benefits for employees. However, the offer is still lacking. The solution: increase data harvesting – via IoT – and share it between cities and MaaS providers. If that happened on a large enough scale, MaaS would instantly be highly convenient for users, and profitable for suppliers.”

ADVERTORIAL

CONCEDED EDITORIAL SPACE

BUSINESS LEASE: A PASSION FOR MOBILITY For 30 years, Business Lease has been providing its clients with the best possible mobility solutions. Today, Business Lease clients can choose from (new) mobility solutions in five Central European markets. The focus remains the same: give the fleet owner, fleet manager or driver the best possible service. As a Dutch family owned business with its roots in Automotive and New Mobility business, we can implement the same solutions in Central Europe as offered in the Western European markets. International we can offer solutions for all three levels, while respecting our ‘quality of service’ adagium.

Operational leasing Business Lease focuses on three core products. The main one is full-service operational leasing, a product that only represents around 20% of all B2B fleets in Central Europe. “If you compare this to the figures in certain Western European countries, that can easily reach 60 to 70%. It is clear this is where our largest growth potential is,” commented Mr Drakopoulos.

Car fleet management

Elias Drakopoulos, CEO Business Lease CEE Business Lease has a strong presence in the five Central European markets it is active in: Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. However, it’s not about being biggest, it’s about being best. “To allow us to focus on quality of service rather than chasing volumes, we do not strictly target top-market positions” said Elias Drakopoulos, CEO Business Lease CEE.” To provide a consolidated approach on our markets, Business Lease International team manages our international customers and prospects. Many international customers operate on a regional-, European- and even Global level. With Business Lease

It is the second most important product for Business Lease. Retaining vehicle ownership is important for certain types of clients, because they are cash-rich companies or because they are government agencies that cannot engage in operational leasing. Other companies find themselves with a fleet that includes owned vehicles after an acquisition. Business Lease has the expertise to align policies and procedures to ensure drivers of owned vehicles, experience the same level of service than those that drive vehicles in operational leasing.

Short-term rental A third focus area for Business Lease is short-term rental. The company is expanding this service to non-leasing B2B customers. Renting vehicles through Business Lease is convenient as it requires little or no effort and guarantees optimal service with the comfort of one contract and one invoice.

Electrification pioneer The Central European market has been slow to embrace electric vehicles, but Business Lease was the first leasing company to offer a series of Teslas about five years ago. “Generally, there is not enough government support to boost infrastructure development,” said Mr Drakopoulos. “Additionally, there are currently no tax advantages for EVs as in certain other countries.” Nevertheless, Business Lease is ready to adopt EVs on a larger scale when these conditions improve. So, how about the future of the Central European market? As Central Europe is offering a huge potential for further growth, Business Lease will continue to deliver a high level of service, combined with new innovative services for a real partnership with our clients. In parallel looking at future trends, we are exploring other market opportunities in mobility areas that we would like to introduce to our customers across Central Europe.

More info Do you want to find out what Business Lease can do for you? Get in touch with Business Lease International; Ms Erika Korver, International Sales & Marketing T +31 30 20 20 603 e.korver@businesslease.com

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IN THE INDUSTRY Steven Schoefs

NEW GLOBAL FLEET MANAGER FOR PMI Huub Smeets recently joined Philip Morris International (PMI) as Global Procurement Manager for Fleet and Travel. Mr Smeets is based out of the Madrid office. In this new role he succeeds Almy Magalhaes, Global Fleet Manager of the Year 2018, who recently moved to Ecolab. During his career

Mr Smeets worked in similar positions for companies like Philips, IBM, Rockwell Automation as well as BMC Software. For the last 10 years, he was a consultant to the corporate side of the fleet and travel industry.

ADAM LONGENECKER JOINS ZIMMER BIONET Adam Longenecker, a member of the Global Fleet Managers Club, has been appointed the new EMEA Strategic Sourcing Lead for Fleet at Zimmer Biomet, with the inten-

tion to harmonise the 1,200 strong European fleet. Adam was previously responsible for Global Indirect Procurement at Mettler-Toledo.

MANAGEMENT REINFORCEMENT AT MACADAM

XXIMO PARTNERS WITH UBER FOR BUSINESS

Macadam, the market leader for end-of-contract vehicle inspections in the Benelux and France, appoints Bertrand Durand, effective from September 2019 as COO of the Group. Previously, Mr Durand led the French division of Macadam. As of that date, Macadam France will be managed by Vincent Muyllaert.

Mobility specialist XXImo has integrated ‘Uber for Business’ in its own mobility expenses platform, and this at European level. The move signifies Uber and XXImo’s ambition to build an even smarter ecosystem, bringing easily accessible MaaS within ever closer reach.

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MARCHEL KOOPS NEW CCO AT ATHLON Marchel Koops will join the Athlon Management Board as Chief Commercial Officer, the lease company has just announced. He will replace Peter Derks, who will retire at the

end of this year. Mr Koops’s own role as Managing Director of Athlon Netherlands will be taken up by Jean-Pierre Vissers.

KEY HIRES FOR FIXICO, THE #1 SMART MOBILITY START-UP AWARD 2018

ALD LAUNCHES MAAS APP

Fixico, the smart car damage repair handler, and #1 of the Smart Mobility Start-Up Award 2018, announced that four key figures of the automotive and lease market will join their management team. Cees Klassen, Paul Verkinderen, Ralf Turley and Patrick Vierveijzer are hired to accelerate Fixico’s growth in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. Fixico’s expansion plan is to cover 10 European countries in the following three years.

ALD Automotive has launched ALD Move in the Netherlands. It’s the company’s first MaaS solution. ALD Move is an application that combines real-time travel insight and advice with a range of mobility offerings. Its aim is, firstly, to improve efficiency and encourage responsible mobility behaviour – and ultimately to foster a holistic, flexible and smart approach to travel. ALD Move has a travel assistant, route planner, and a chatbot.

PASCAL BÉLOT NAMED B2B OPERATIONS MANAGER AT PSA Pascal Bélot has been nominated as B2B Operations Manager for the countries where the four PSA brands (Peugeot, Citroën, Opel and DS) are represented by private importers. This zone counts 20 countries from Ice-

land and Ireland to Malta, through the Nordic and Baltic countries, including some countries from Central Europe and Switzerland.

WHEN YOU KNOW WHAT FITS YOUR FLEET.

THE ALL-NEW ŠKODA KAMIQ www.skoda-auto.com

Combined fuel consumption and CO2 emissions according to the legislation of the concerned country.

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FLEET EUROPE AWARDS WINNERS LOOK BACK Benjamin Uyttebroeck

@uytteb

In a few weeks’ time, we will know who wins the 2019 Fleet Europe Awards. The experience will have a lasting effect on their lives and their careers, as these award winners of previous Fleet Europe Awards editions explain.

Carel Aucamp • 2016 International Fleet Safety Award • Position in 2016: Global Category Manager POSM, Fleet and Travel (British American Tobacco) • Current position: Group Head of NGP Procurement (NGP)

How has your career developed since winning the award? Winning the award in November 2016 opened the door to complete two creative and free thinking projects. In August 2017, I was asked to lead the newly created NGP function and this ultimately led to my promotion to Group Head of NGP Procurement at the start of 2019. I am now leading a team of 24 procurement professionals within Next Generation Products.

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Did the award help you achieve your goals or advance your career? The award certainly provided me with confidence that my peer group acknowledge the strategy and the way we implemented the solution. Internally, it also provided my stakeholder with acknowledgement of the progress and focus on what mattered – our people. This helped build a number of bridges, not only for myself but also to deeper engage the organisation on value-added procurement activities.

In May 2018, I won the Future Procurement Leaders Award and one of my case studies regarding stakeholder management was the success of Fleet. I see a direct correlation between not only the award but also the interaction with the Fleet Europe team to speak at events and attend peer-group review sessions.

How has fleet management developed since you won the award? Unfortunately, I have not been close to the category since winning the award.

How do you see fleet management evolve in the future? In the last few years, I have noticed that Travel and Fleet are coming together. I think this is a great progression towards mobility and seeing the categories as one addressing the business need in a less rigid, but robust state. It seems like more and more solutions are being created around the employees which combine travel and fleet to one category.

Janos Kis • 2010 Fleet Europe Safety Award • Position in 2010: Fleet Support Manager (Coca-Cola) • Current position: Procurement Director (Coca-Cola)

How has your career developed since winning the award? I was fortunate to progress in my career since 2010. I have worked for various Coca-Cola entities, tried myself in different categories and fulfilled growing positions within procurement. From a relatively junior manager in 2010, I am a director now.

Did the award help you achieve your goals or advance your career? Certainly. The award helped to get much more exposure and recognition for our team internally but also supported to get attention from existing and potential suppliers.

How has fleet management developed since you won the award? I admit I sometimes start feeling old when I look back to this significant milestone in my career. Both technology and fleet management solutions have developed considerably. Technology features that were a privilege to a few

high-end vehicle models have become standard today. Fleet managers are benefiting today from numerous digital tools, they make real-time decisions and have full transparency on their cost – this was only a dream nearly 10 years back. We also see a large degree of diversification of solution providers and a much better focus on customer needs.

How do you see fleet management evolve in the future? Digitisation, automation and increasing concerns about sustainability are the key drivers. As far as stakeholders are concerned, the picture is mixed: on the one hand fleet has always enjoyed a fair degree of attention across the company. On the other hand, remarkable changes happened in the last several years like the increased focus on privacy. The ‘voice of employees’ got also stronger in my view and fleet managers engage with employee bodies more than before.

Almy Magalhaes • 2018 Global Fleet Manager of the Year Award • Position in 2018: Global Procurement Executive Fleet, E-Commerce and Distribution (Philip Morris International) • Current position: Senior Procurement Manager Fleet & Travel EMEA (Ecolab Europe)

A few months after winning the award I changed company and assumed a more senior role with an extended scope as EMEA Senior Procurement Manager for Fleet Mobility and Travel at Ecolab. A great challenge in a very dynamic international corporation and business segment.

Did the award help you achieve your goals or advance your career? Definitely, particularly thanks to the network of Fleet and Mobility leaders it offered access to. By enhancing the connection with several corporate fleet leaders, start-ups and suppliers of different

segments, I am better capable to capture, assess and propose innovative solutions in my current role.

How has fleet management developed since you won the award? Electrification, automation, connectivity and shared mobility remain the key trends under development.

How do you see fleet management evolve in the future? The combination of mobility as a service, autonomous and electric vehicles will transform the way we work and live. But the pace of change presents challenges for public authorities, who are working to understand how to ensure the outcome creates societal good, and for private organisations whose business models are being disrupted.

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How has your career developed since winning the award?

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Paul Darbyshire • 2007 International Green Fleet Implementation Award • Position in 2007: Global Purchasing Manager (AkzoNobel) • Current position: Global Procurement PMO and Capability Lead (Johnson Matthey)

How has your career developed since winning the award? In around 2009 I stepped out of Procurement and worked in a strategy implementation role for a few years and then went on to work as a Lean 6 Sigma Black Belt both within AkzoNobel. I stepped out of AkzoNobel at the end of 2015 to move to a London-based recruiter before returning to Procurement in 2018 with Johnson Matthey.

Did the award help you achieve your goals or advance your career? Winning the award was a great outcome for AkzoNobel, as it really helped us sell internally what we were trying to achieve and validate the approach we had. From a personal perspective, it was great to gain the exposure from being involved in it and

I remember some really interesting discussions around that time on the back of it, which we could bring back to our work in AkzoNobel.

How has fleet management developed since you won the award? It is clear that the challenges we were starting to look at back in 20062008 are very high on the priority list today, around sustainability and how to ensure your fleet is as green as possible whilst making sure the TCO is economically justifiable.

How do you see fleet management evolve in the future? As technology evolves and lifestyles change it will be about finding the balance on job need and perk cars usage with organisations needing to show how they are keeping their carbon footprint minimised.

Bruce MacLaren • Inducted into the International Fleet Hall of Fame (2012) • Position in 2012: Senior Category Manager (Microsoft) • Current position: Senior Procurement Manager (Microsoft)

How has your career developed since winning the award? I’ve always been fascinated by the intersection between procurement and sales. I discovered that there is value in advising clients in various product groups on how to efficiently allocate indirect expenditures in a compliant manner.

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Did the award help you achieve your goals or advance your career? Certainly! It helped me to grow and learn. The award was not self-serving, it was about what our team was able to deliver. Overall we were successful in creating change within the corporation which led to increased customer satisfaction.

How has fleet management developed since you won the award? When I won the award the concepts

of alternative fuels and autonomous driving were in their infancy. I actually remember an executive from a famous car company telling me that electric vehicles were a gimmick. Today, electric and autonomous cars are a reality.

How do you see fleet management evolve in the future? Technology will enable change in business models far beyond what is in practice today. An example is Quantum computing. The problem today is not data. It’s too much of it. Quantum computers will be able to sift through billions of data sets in a mere fraction of the time it takes today. Although I love the technology in the fleet industry, my passion was always around the people. They remain the most valuable resource in the industry. Technology must serve the people; not the other way around.

Christian Lindskov Alsø • 2015 Fleet Manager of the Year • Position in 2015: Head of Group Fleet & Procurement Excellence (ISS) • Current position: Regional COO Asia Pacific (ISS)

How has your career developed since winning the award? Since the award I was promoted to VP & Head of Group Category Management. One year later I was promoted to Group Chief Procurement Officer, a role I was in for three years before I moved to Singapore to take on the role as APAC Chief Operations Officer (COO).

Did the award help you achieve your goals or advance your career? It was a great experience, but even though it did not catapult my career as such, it offered great exposure within the fleet and procurement community.

How has fleet management developed since you won the award?

collaboration with our partners, both on the OEM and leaseco side. The debate on TCO as evolved a lot, and is now the accepted common denominator when deciding on vehicle types.

How do you see fleet management evolve in the future? I expect that government bodies will have a greater impact on the choice of fleet type, just look at the impact of IFRS and the emissions targets set in EU. With cost pressure also comes the need to look at internal cost. I expect leasing companies will take on more responsibility but at a lower premium than what is the case today.

A great deal. In ISS we are taking great strides of enabling an even closer

2019 FLEET EUROPE AWARDS FINALISTS Would you like to find out who are the finalists of the 2019 Fleet Europe Awards for fleet managers? Scan the QR code to go to our website where we have listed the finalists in the following categories: • Global Fleet Manager of the Year • European Fleet and Mobility Manager of the Year • European Optimisation Fleet Manager of the Year • European Safety Fleet Manager of the Year • European Green Fleet Manager of the Year • European Smart Mobility Manager of the Year

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The jury, made up of corporate fleet managers, fleet and mobility suppliers and Fleet Europe representatives, will announce the winners on 7 November in Estoril. This year, the jury president is Edward Kulperger, Vice President Europe at Geotab.

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START-UP OF THE YEAR, START OF SUCCESS Fien Van den Steen

Taking part in the Start-Up of the Year can have serious consequences, luckily for the good! “The award has definitely opened up more doors for us,” said Derk Roodhuyzen de Vries, CEO of Fixico, last year’s winner. So which doors precisely? We had a chat with the numbers 1, 2, and 3 of the previous three editions and had a look at the routes they have taken so far. They impressed us with the progress they have made on the path to success.

International recognition “The award has definitely opened up more doors for us,” said Derk Roodhuyzen de Vries. “Fleet Europe is a renowned organisation in the industry and the Start-up of the Year award comes with international recognition. An award like this helps to validate your business and underlines your success. Internally it serves as a huge boost for morale and functions as a constant reminder that we are on the right path and that we are able to do great things.”

new promising partnerships with leading companies.” Nicolas Rampelberghs, who represented Kowo when it won the third prize in 2017, came to a similar conclusion. He points to the belief in their product, the visibility and the launch of their crucial partnership with Axa (a Belgian insurance company) as the main benefits of their participation. “Kowo is like the corporate Uber, so being part of the Awards gave a lot of visibility and it lended credibility to our app. In the end, we won various awards, showing that carpooling is a hot topic.”

Appyparking, 2018. Moreover, Boutcher-West made us curious: “We are about to announce some exciting fleet customers on the platform, as a direct result of our success at the Fleet Europe Summit. Thanks to this introduction to the fleet sector we have iterated our products to support partnership frameworks already serving fleet managers, which has made the integration smoother.”

Scaling up Kowo, 2017.

Better than a business card

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Fixico, 2018. “In a relatively short time, we have seen an impressive uptake in fleet and insurance partners, and among many others, international players like AXA and AON are using our platform to offer a fully digital damage handling proposition to their customers. Over the last few months, we have launched multiple successful pilots and we are currently in the process of rolling out

Ben Boutcher-West, Head of Mobility of Appyparking, runner-up in the Smart Mobility Start-Up Awards 2018, had a similar story. “The Award certainly gave us valuable recognition and credibility within a complex industry. To win an award is also a far easier way to get introduced rather than business cards!” In the case of Appyparking it could have been a very remarkable business card: “We had just received the trophy and while we continued dancing at the after-party I met our new fleet customer.”

Since winning the third prize in 2018, Bestmile has been growing remarkably as well. “We have grown from managing small-scale autonomous shuttle pilots to full-scale commercial projects, including human-driven ridehailing and micro-transit services. In terms of employees, we have grown from 40 to 60 employees. Our operating area has expanded and our platform now supports fleets on three continents. Our customers range from private ridehailing services using professional drivers and private fleets to large public transport agencies offering last-mile autonomous shuttle services. We have also been growing our vehicle compatibility and partner ecosystem, and we recently

announced partnerships with Lohr Industrie and StreetDrone,” explained Bestmile CEO Anne Mellano.

WeProov, the winner in 2016, experienced the connecting effect of the award as well. “After the award we had the opportunity to be in direct contact with the key actors in the market, which allowed us to start planning meetings and build recognition in the European market,” said CEO Alexandre Meyer. Since 2016 they grew from 10 to 40 employees, from 2 to 13 languages, and they expanded from activities only in France to the whole of Europe and North Africa. “In five years, our goal is to be a key actor in the ecosystem.”

The successful start of CarPay Diem has been helped by their nomination in the Start-Up Awards. “The award was important for us because it was a recognition of the fact that the market was waiting for our solution. We were ranked second in this contest and we were not even in production yet. Now we are in contact with companies from all over the world, which is partly the success of the Fleet Europe Award.”

Bestmile, 2018. Participating in the Awards has given the company a push in the right direction. “The marketplace has recognised that fleet orchestration technology is needed for real-world mobility service optimisation. The award, new customers, and new investors have all combined to make that clear.” Assisto, 2016.

Connecting Parkd, the first-prize winner of 2017, also described the award as a helpful connector. “We made incredible connections, and the award inspires trust and creates recognition among partners and customers. These are

WeProov, 2016.

From zero to hero The story of CarPay Diem, the secondprize winner in 2017, is somewhat remarkable. “At the time of the Awards, we were not in production yet. We had the idea and the platform, but we were not active yet. Now, we have several customers,” said CEO Frédéric Stiernon. “We went in production in mid-January. Since then we sold more than 6 million litres of fuel through the CarPay Diem platform. This means more than 175,000 refills in less than 6 months. This makes CarPay Diem the largest mobile fuel platform in Europe.”

WHAT DO THE START-UPS OFFER?

• Fixico offers efficient repair handling.

• Appyparking makes parking more efficient.

• Bestmile optimises fleet vehicle usage.

• Parkd offers efficient parking payment.

• CarPay Diem is a smart and efficient fuel payment system.

• Kowo makes carpooling efficient.

• WeProov takes the hassle

Parkd, 2017.

Discover the finalists for the Smart Mobility Start Up Awards 2019 here:

CarPay Diem, 2017.

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two very important things for a starting company in an industry with big established players,” said CEO Olivier de Clercq. “We had our first telematics connections and are now growing towards connections with leasing companies, rental car companies and OEMs. […] We started in the Netherlands and we are now active in 3 countries. Parkd is used by some of the biggest fleets in Belgium, the Netherlands and even across Europe!”

out of damage and repair handling.

Getting you from complex to simple Athlon navigates you through the complexity of the countless challenges and choices in the field of business mobility: efficient mobility management, cost control, e-mobility, changing regulations, sustainability, employee motivation, van leasing, rental â&#x20AC;Ś It all becomes easy with Athlonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s solutions. No matter how big or small your fleet is. We simplify your life on www.athlon.com

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10 Q&AS ABOUT THE START-UP OF THE YEAR 2019 Fien Van den Steen

WeProov, CarPay Diem, Fixico - these are just some of the start-ups that won at previous editions of the Smart Mobility Start-Up of the Year awards. Cast your vote now and join us at the Fleet Europe Summit to find out who takes the awards home this year. is the Start-Up of the 1 What Year - what are we looking for? Each year, the Smart Mobility Start-Up of the Year Award is given to a promising start-up developing innovative products or services in the fleet and mobility industry and showing high potential for growth.

zero to hero - how can 2 From a start-up reach the stage in Estoril?

Out of all the applicants the jury will select 20 start-ups for the second round. During the jury meeting in the first week of October, those who made it to the long list are invited to present their case by means of a videoconference. From the 20 applicants, 12

will be withheld to take part in at the Start-Up of the Year contest in Estoril in November 2019. There they will have the chance to present themselves to the audience. Not only will they have their own booth where they can connect with all attendees of the conference, they will also get stage time in which they have to present their business in a couple of minutes. After their live presentation, the jury and the audience will decide which 3 candidates make it to the podium, where glitter and glamour â&#x20AC;&#x201C; or rather, connections, visibility and credibility â&#x20AC;&#x201C; are waiting.

3 Who will be in the jury?

The head of the jury will be Vincent Degives, who in his function

of Marketing Manager at Fleet Europe is closely connected to a wide variety of companies active in the fleet industry, both on the demand and the supply side. He will be assisted by the other jury members: Philippe Bismut (Independent consultant, and previous CEO of Arval), Tiziano Della Spina (Marketing Manager of Omoove), Antoine Guarrigues (Managing Partner/Co-Founder at Iris Capital), and Sven Van Rossum (Head of Innovation, Nexus Communication).

are the start-ups compet4 Who ing with? This year, 40 start-ups based in 18 different countries across the world have applied.

2019 1

THE NETHERLANDS

SWEDEN

DENMARK

FINLAND 1 UNITED KINGDOM

BELGIUM

GERMANY

3 SPAIN

ISRAEL/ THE NETHERLANDS

GEORGIA

SLOVENIA

PORTUGAL

4 FRANCE

2 ITALY 6

ISRAEL

SINGAPORE

AUSTRALIA

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3 UNITED STATES

1 IRELAND/ USA

RUSSIA

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international is the scope of 5 How the Start-Up of the Year?

THE NETHERLANDS

For the 2019 edition 40 start-ups out of 12 different countries participated. Year after year, the number of applications has been growing, and so has the geographical scope. Participating at the Start-Up of the Year is not only open to all nationalities, it provides a global audience as well.

GERMANY

2016

FRANCE

2017 3

THE NETHERLANDS

BELGIUM

ESTONIA

SWITZERLAND

LUXEMBOURG

BELGIUM

1 FRANCE

ISRAEL

2018 2

THE NETHERLANDS

1 IRELAND/ USA

6 UNITED STATES

UNITED KINGDOM

FINLAND

BELGIUM

GERMANY

2 SPAIN

LUXEMBOURG

SWITZERLAND

PORTUGAL

11 FRANCE

1 BRAZIL

FLEET EUROPE #110

AUSTRALIA

many start-ups apply 6 How each year? YEAR

NUMBER OF STARTUPS

2016

2017

2018

2019

start-ups are already 7 Which glittering in the gallery of honour?

2016

WeProov, Spiri, Assisto

2017

Parkd, CarPay Diem, Kowo

2018

Fixico, Appyparking, Bestmile

can you meet the Smart 8 How Mobility Start-ups?

can I vote for the 10 How start-up of my choice?

Join us in Estoril during the Fleet Europe Summit, where you can see and meet all start-up finalists in the Start-up Village. Moreover, on November 6, they will pitch their solution in just a couple of minutes.

The jury has already made its choice, which counts for 70% of the final vote. The other 30% is in your hands! Go to fleeteurope.com or scan the QR code below to cast your vote.

in it for the start-ups 9 What’s themselves? This is a great opportunity for startups to challenge themselves with experts in the industry. As every applicant receives a ticket for the Fleet Europe Summit, they are sure to meet interesting people in Estoril. Moreover, all finalists will receive a booth at the exhibition (and a second ticket) to promote their product. Through the years, participants have found the experience very interesting both in terms of networking and from a competition point of view.

Discover the finalists for the Smart Mobility Start-Up Awards 2019 here:

A C O M M O N V O I C E T O W A R D S T H E M A R K E T, PA R T N E R S A N D S U P P L I E R S

The Car Remarketing Association Europe (CARA)

established by key players in the used car market industry 6 REASONS TO JOIN CARA 4. Network with decision makers. As a non-profit, CARA offers a

1. Get unique industry insight. CARA is a forum for top remarketing

unique forum to engage with the industry’s top deciders.

execs to share their views and knowledge.

5. Create synergies to benefit your business. In the multi-faceted

2. Help develop industry standards. CARA creates and improves

shared interests.

3. Learn about digitisation and new market trends. CARA aims to

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understand and enhance new remarketing business opportunities.

mitted to defend the industry’s interests, in Brussels and elsewhere.

To get more information about the association or to become a member, please visit our website www.cara-europe.org 31

FLEET EUROPE #110

world of remarketing, CARA is the place to bundle and defend

standards and shares best practices for the European used-car trade.

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NEW HYUNDAI RANGE COVERS ALL FUEL TYPES In a rapidly evolving automotive environment fleet owners are confronted with difficult choices when setting up an ecologically and economically optimised car policy. Hyundai’s complete model range covers all fuel types so fleet owners are guaranteed to find the best solution.

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No other manufacturer in the world offers the same range of eco-friendly powertrains Hyundai does. With its current range of models and fuel types, the Korean brand is years ahead of its direct competitors, leaving no technology unused in order to respond to every fleet’s needs. Hyundai’s quest for the integration of environmentally friendly drivetrain technologies in their model range is not new. The manufacturer has been offering a great number of alternative drivetrains throughout the last decade, culminating in the current model range that consists of vehicles with petrol or diesel engines, full hybrids, plug-in hybrids, battery-electric vehicles and even a fuel-cell hydrogen car.

FLEET EUROPE #110

IONIQ Three years ago, in 2016, the IONIQ was the world’s first vehicle to be offered in three different electrified powertrains: hybrid, plug-in hybrid and battery electric. Drastically reducing or even completely avoiding any CO2-emissions, these drivetrains perfectly fit the needs of today’s car fleets that – more than ever before - base their car choices on TCO

calculations rather than leasing prices. Thanks to the particularly interesting taxation of all three electrified IONIQmodels, combined with Hyundai’s very competitive model pricing, the success of the mid-size Hyundai is undeniable. For Hyundai, ecology goes beyond reducing emissions. One of the key characteristics of the IONIQ is the use of recycled and eco-friendly materials, making it more durable and sustainable, a tendency that is welcomed by fleet owners all over Europe.

Kona Hyundai’s technological advance does not stop with the IONIQ, because with the Kona Electric, a second electric model was launched last year. It is the first fully electric subcompact SUV in Europe, combining electric mobility with the ever-popular SUV body type. And for those who wish to combine electric and petrol power, a brand-new full hybrid powertrain is now available on the Kona.

NEXO fuell cell While most other carmakers still have to introduce their first battery-electric vehicle, Hyundai recently launched

the NEXO, its second fuel-cell model, that succeeds the pioneering iX35 Fuel Cell, which, at its launch in 2013, was the first commercially mass-produced hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle in the world. Without harmful emissions and water vapour as the only by-product, hydrogen fuel-cell drivetrains are the future of mobility. A future that already is the present at Hyundai. By 2025, Hyundai will produce no less than 44 electrified models as part of its commitment to clean mobility.

More info https://www.hyundai.com/eu/ nextawaits.html

SUMMIT

10 START-UPS TO WATCH OUT FOR IN 2020 Fien Van den Steen

Fast and furious is not only a well-known film franchise, it also summarises how the automotive market is evolving. The big automotive players are still at the steering wheel but they can no longer ignore several start-ups that are attempting to lead the way.

Mobility start-ups often combine connected technology with developments in self-driving, augmented reality and artificial intelligence.

Domains for automotive start-ups 1. Connected 2. Autonomous 3. Big data 4. Augmented reality

For each domain we selected a start-up to keep an eye on in the year to come, based on the research of StartUs Insights and on the EU-Startups, two organisations recognised for their research and insights with regard to European start-ups.

5. Shared mobility 6. Micromobility 7. Mobility as a Service 8. Green last mile 9. Lightweight materials 10. Public transport

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StartUs Insights analysed over 8,000 start-ups active in the automotive industry and came up with various domains in which start-ups are setting the direction for the automotive future. There are some obvious domains for innovation and disruption such as connected, shared, autonomous and green mobility â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the latter includes green or lightweight materials. Yet, the evolution will move beyond automotive exclusively to Mobility-as-aService (MaaS), micromobility, public transport, big data, augmented reality (AR) and artificial intelligence (AI).

SUMMIT

Connected vehicles The German start-up PACE Telematics could be at the steering wheel of connected cars. The young company recently won the CyberChampions Awards with its simple and brilliant solutions to transform a random car into a hassle-free smart car. PACE uses a Bluetooth adapter to be connected to a smartphone in order to enable the smart functions such as placing an emergency call.

Big data The Tel-Aviv based startup Otonomo allows car manufacturers to monetise car data and share it, via its marketplace for car data. As a result, the OEMs can provide their customers with new services. Moreover, if Big Data gets coupled to predictive analytics and machine learning, it could create a lot of additional benefits. Otonomo’s cloud technology is already deployed in millions of cars.

FLEET EUROPE #110

Autonomous Vehicles The British start-up FiveAI is creating software relying on machine learning to achieve full autonomy, which should take autonomous cars to the next level. To optimise data collection and fully understand the car’s surroundings, various technologies are combined such as LIDAR, IMS (Internal Mode Switches), radar, ultrasound, audio, GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) and high-resolution cameras.

Augmented Reality The Switzerland-based start-up WayRay is making smart even smarter by implementing augmented reality technologies in vehicles. WayRay developed holographic navigation

systems to take connected cars to the next level. In addition, WayRay developed infotainment systems for cars, jumping in the increasing in-vehicle services market as well.

lightweight materials can make a difference. ECOmove developed a carbon-fibre lightweight chassis which is lighter than the standard one, yet it maintains the same strength and stability.

Shared mobility The French start-up Heetch is one of those ridehailing and sharing startups that sounds less familiar than ridehailing giants Uber and Lyft. Heetch in particular focuses on ridesharing alternatives to taxis, giving a more economical answer to expensive latenight taxi rides.

Green least mile The Dutch start-up Cargoroo provides a solution for the increasingly decarbonising last mile. With its electric cargo bikes both families and businesses can carry their cargo around urban areas where low emissions zones and/or diesel bans apply. Agile, green and flexible, these vehicles are spreading over Europe. Not surprisingly, they won the European Start-Up Prize for Mobility in 2019.

Micromobility One of the scooter-sharing startups to keep an eye on is Circ, formerly known as Flash. The Berlin-based start-up was founded in 2018 but it reached the milestone of 1 million trips in only 132 days. As a result, it received Series A funding of ¤53 million in January 2019 and is now operating in 9 countries and counting.

Vaigo Vaigo is a platform that offers full administrative and process support to corporates, enabling them to provide flexible mobility policies to their employees. It is not a mobility supplier itself: it’s an admin and integration platform that links corporate processes to the various mobility providers and MaaS apps. The start-up Vaigo was developed with the support of accountancy and business advisory network BDO.

Lightweight materials The Danish start-up ECOmove jumped on the train of lightweight solutions. When fuel economisation is brought to the table, be it for environmental or for economic reasons,

Public transport The Spanish start-up Shotl bridges shared and public urban mobility. By providing a platform for mass transport operators, Shotl brings together riders and drivers, in order to increase the usage rate of bus lines. Firstly, Shotl detects underused lines and stops and maps the real demand and usage. Next, the platform converts these buses into flexible and dynamic transport services adapted to the realtime demand. Various cities are already cooperating with Shotl, and not only cities, but your next business travel could also be enhanced by Shotl, as they cooperate with airports like the one in Munich. This list is by no means exhaustive but it gives a taste of the various domains in which start-ups can become important trendsetters and demonstrate where the automotive market could be heading in the future.

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SUMMIT

WHAT FLEET CAN LEARN FROM OTHERS Yves Helven and Frank Jacobs

No industry is an island, and the fleet and mobility sectors, too, can - and do - learn from other players. Some sectors are adjacent, like travel, others seem a bit more far-fetched, like real estate.

Real estate It’s not just fleet managers who are talking about mobility, flexibility and connectivity. Facility managers are having a fairly similar conversation, centred on workspace. The parallels between company car on the one hand and office or desk on the other are striking, as are the similarities between professional facility managers (CBRE, JLL, Cushman & Wakefield, to name but a few) and vehicle leasing companies. A striking difference: facility managers are much better at using technology to enhance and data-mine their users’ experience. Fleet managers, meanwhile, are still hesitant to get behind vehicle connectivity (let alone telematics). The facility manager has no problem creating direct interaction between user, asset and supply stack. The start was simple enough: if an employee wants to book a meeting room, they can skip the reception desk and do it via Outlook. Following occupation rate analysis, facility managers have also done away with dedicated desks.

FLEET EUROPE #110

Thanks to connectivity and data collection, today’s facility manager is less focused on savings and much more on strategy and enhancing the user experience. How to translate all that into fleet management? By connecting vehicles with employees and operating systems. There are tools available, but generally not offered by fleet partners. However,

the tech supply chain has understood this and is now establishing itself in the space where leasing companies and OEMs used to be.

Pharma Long gone are the days when thousands of medical representatives (MRs) would hit the road to visit hospitals, doctors and pharmaceutical wholesalers. Doctors today are unwilling to see MRs because the information they need is widely available digitally. The pharmaceutical industry – traditionally managing large corporate fleets – has been thoroughly shaken by the impact of digitisation. It had to dramatically adapt its business model, away from sales based on MR visits. Many companies have successfully switched from a quantitative approach (high number of visits) to a more qualitative take (focus on value-added visits). Simply because of its effect on fleet sizes, the impact of digitisation on fleet management in the pharma sector has been obvious. However, that trend is not pharma-specific, but applies to all sectors to a certain extent. Here, too, a change in mobility needs and/ or company car eligibility is inevitable. Asset utilisation definitely is one of the major concerns of today’s corporate clients – and this goes for FTEs as much as for buildings and vehicles. Fleet managers can play an instrumental role by creating more asset flexibility, thus making car fleets adaptable to changes in the business model.

Travel The merger of Fleet and Travel whether or not by way of Mobility simply replacing both categories - has long been predicted. While examples are multiplying, the homogenisation of both categories is not yet an industry-wide trend. Meanwhile, there is a lot that fleet managers can learn from their Travel colleagues. First off, even short of merging Fleet and Travel, adding up the numbers of various spend categories allows companies to press for better conditions from suppliers - and potentially identify overconsumption by certain users. Another aspect is the overriding importance in Travel of timing as a factor in cost optimisation. Buying an aeroplane ticket last-minute can be eye-wateringly expensive; it pays to book ahead - months ahead, if possible. The best way to achieve this is by focusing on long-term planning of business processes, a best practice in Travel that is also bound to lead to more economical choices in Fleet. Personalised incidental travel is expensive, so Travel is about justification and avoidance: is the trip absolutely

Improve your fleet management by introducing traditional game mechanics.

Gamification To optimise fleet cost, drivers need to be on their best behaviour. This is notoriously tricky to achieve, as drivers assume the bill for their carelessness will be footed by the company. Fortunately, Fleet and Mobility professionals can turn to gamification to improve results. As the term indicates, gamification introduces the competitive and reward elements of traditional game mechanics to motivate and modify driver behaviour. Typical targets for gamification in fleets are the reduction of fuel and maintenance cost, the improvement of health and safety records, and/or the promotion of green performance indicators. The margin for cost optimisation via gamification is considerable since up to 30% of TCO is attributable to

fuel, maintenance and insurance all of which are influenced by driver behaviour. That behaviour is easily monitored via telematics, but negative scrutiny may generate resistance. That’s why the key of an effective gamification strategy is to reward good outcomes (e.g. less hard braking) rather than punish bad ones (e.g. more accelerating). Setting positive performance targets and rewarding drivers who achieve them is a practice that kills two birds with one stone: it facilitates a driver culture that is at ease with performance monitoring, and it generates significant cost reductions.

may shrink. This means that instead of seeking to rationalise expenditure, they are incentivised to make otherwise unjustifiable purchases. There is one other aspect of non-profit fleet management that does serve as an example, however. NGO fleets in developing countries typically operate in a very difficult environment: a harsh climate, lacking infrastructure, with very few service and maintenance options. In response to those circumstances, fleets generally consist of vehicles that are sturdy and ‘basic’, i.e. low-tech and easy to repair. While for-profit drivers may not want to drive a stripped down bush vehicle for work, their fleet managers may weigh the cost versus benefit of the hightech paraphernalia that catch the eye of many a fleet driver.

Non-profit Is there anything fleet and mobility managers can learn from the non-profit sector? The intuitive answer is no, and the clue is in the term non-profit. Indeed, NGOs operating fleets of considerable size are prone to non-economical thinking when it comes to fleet management. Spending decisions are not (and should not) be taken based on the profit principle. However, the result is that if they spend less on their fleets than the previous year, their fleet budgets for the next year come under scrutiny and

To optimise fleet cost, drivers need to be on their best behaviour, which is notoriously tricky to achieve.

FLEET EUROPE #110

necessary? Can it be avoided, or its cost reduced (e.g. train instead of plane within a certain radius)? Such thinking doesn’t come naturally yet in Fleet, but the growing ease of teleconferencing and teleworking and the ever-increasing concerns about the ecological impact of mobility will make it as relevant as it is in Travel.

SUMMIT

BALANCE FLEET STRATEGIES AND EMPLOYEE NEEDS Benjamin Uyttebroeck

@uytteb

Alongside the Fleet Europe Summit, the International Fleet Managers Institute (IFMI) holds its traditional masterclass for corporate fleet and mobility managers. It’s a mustattend event if you want to stay up to speed about what’s going on in fleet and mobility.

2018 IFMI Masterclass in Barcelona, where participants discussed strategies to “weatherproof” their fleet and mobility programmes. The 2019 IFMI Masterclass will be held on 6 November in Estoril, just outside of Lisbon (Portugal). As always, it takes place on the first day of the Fleet Europe Summit.

FLEET EUROPE #110

In this Masterclass, fleet and mobility managers will learn how they can balance cost-saving corporate strategies and employee transportation needs. In hands-on workshops and during enlightening presentations by industry insiders, the following topics will be discussed: • Outsourcing fleet management: yes or no? In a panel debate, participants discuss reasons to outsource fleet management, or not to, based on their own experiences. • How to create supplier optimisation In a series of practical case studies, speakers outline why they prefer a multi-supply or a sole-supply policy. • The real impact of WLTP Invariably, WLTP leads to costs going up. So should companies increase their fleet budgets or simply steer their drivers towards smaller, more environmentally friendly vehicles. • New company car taxation in Europe Company car taxation evolves fast

across Europe, but unfortunately often at a slower pace than technology. It is often still based on NEDC rather than WLTP values, for instance. At IFMI, you get the opportunity to ask your questions about company car taxation. • How is the TCO calculation evolving? TCO is still the be-all and end-all of fleet management. But what should it include? Should it include parking? Or flexible office space? And how do you calculate the TCO of electric vehicles? • How to deal with connected vehicles and data privacy There are no limits to what technology can do with data from connected vehicles, and there will be even fewer limits once 5G is live. Privacy concerns are an issue, though, particularly for perk cars, and even more so in light of GDPR. • Different fleets deserve a different kind of fleet management Fleets come in all sizes, from very small single-digit fleets to fleets in the many thousands. Still other fleets may consist of large fleets in one country and much smaller ones in another country. How do you deal with different fleet sizes?

EV Test Drive For the second consecutive year, IFMI attendees will get the opportunity to experience what it’s like to drive a full-electric or plug-in hybrid car in the EV Test Drive. It will be the ideal opportunity to try out the latest EVs on the market in Europe and to assess whether they deserve to be included in your fleet policies. The IFMI Masterclass is made possible by the IFMI partners: ALD, Arval, Athlon and LeasePlan.

REGISTER NOW FOR THE 2019 IFMI MASTERCLASS There are still some available places for the IFMI Masterclass, which will take place in Estoril (Portugal) on 6 November 2019. Go to summit.fleeteurope.com for more details.

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FLEET EUROPE #110

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NEW ENERGIES

ADDING ELECTRIC VEHICLES TO YOUR FLEET PAYS OFF Jonathan Manning

Four fleet managers share their experiences incorporating electric vehicles in their fleets. Marcus Wagner (SAP), Tomas Björnsson (Vattenfall), Catherine Hutt (Addison Lee Group) and Hans Den Hollander (Cisco) explain why they decided to go electric and what obstacles they encountered.

“VOLUME DISCOUNTS ARE MINIMAL FOR ULTRA LOW-EMISSION VEHICLES” • Director Sustainability • 26,000 company cars worldwide

Marcus Wagner, Director Sustainability, SAP, said the process of electrification of the company’s fleet began a decade ago with the acquisition of a couple of battery-powered cars as pool cars to gain experience in the technology. The fleet then started a pilot project to test electric vehicles and give employees the chance to learn how to live with them. Ten years on, early adopters in SAP’s large user-chooser fleet in Germany are already driving plug-in hybrids and pure electric vehicles, and the company’s focus has switched to mainstream drivers. “It’s easy to find volunteers who want to test new technology,” said Mr Wagner. “The challenge is always to have an offer that gives the middle or mainstream group of drivers the chance to decide that EVs are a good thing.”

Transforming its fleet to zero-emission vehicles is a key element of SAP’s strategic goal to become carbon neutral by 2025. The multinational software company runs 17,000 company cars in Germany, and 26,000 worldwide, so the scale of the challenge it faces is considerable.

A series of incentives, both financial and non-financial, have been put in place to encourage a move away from petrol and diesel when drivers replace their company cars every four years. With recharging infrastructure still presenting a challenge, SAP has installed 400 charge points at its offices in Germany (and a further 200 at offices in other countries), given drivers ‘fuel’ cards so they can use public recharging networks, and subsidised the cost of installing chargers at drivers’ homes. The company is also currently piloting to pay the costs for the electricity that employees use to charge their company cars while it learns how to master recharging and resolve tax issues.

The fleet buys its cars, and is also having to subsidise the cost of EVs and PHEVs to compensate for their higher acquisition prices. In the long term, Wagner said the switch to zero-emission vehicles should lead to lower total costs of ownership, but at the moment the volume discounts available on ultra low-emission cars are minimal compared to vehicles powered by internal combustion engines. SAP has also encountered availability issues when trying to source EVs, as well as a lack of choice in the mid-market. “We have made plug-in hybrids available to drivers because there are not enough attractive battery-electric vehicles beyond the small car and premium car sectors,” said Mr Wagner. “On the next replacement cycle drivers will hopefully go for pure EVs.” So far, 9% of the fleet in Germany is capable of zero-emission driving already, and SAP has set an objective of reaching 20% by the end of next year. Local conditions dictate the introduction of EVs in other national markets, with many already featuring EVs on their fleets - in the south of France an EV is the default option for employees unless they have a compelling case to drive an internal combustion engine.

FLEET EUROPE #110

Marcus Wagner (SAP):

NEW ENERGIES

“ALL BENEFIT CARS WILL BE ELECTRIC BY 2022” Tomas Björnsson (Vattenfall): • Vice-President of E-mobility and group sponsor of internal electrification • 4,500 vehicles • Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, UK

The 1,000 essential use company cars are already following in a second wave as the result of a new company policy, while 2,500 light commercial vehicles will be the third and final element of the fleet to switch to battery power. Piloting is already being done. While the company’s environmental commitments are profound, its move to EVs should also make business sense, said Björnsson, with total costs of ownership of EVs in cases already proving cheaper than equivalent internal combustion engine vehicles, due to their lower fuel and maintenance costs. A green agenda and lower TCOs have made a compelling business case for EVs, but the company has also had to secure the support of drivers. A series of events, test drives, reports and videos that communicate its strategy have aimed to win the hearts and minds of employees. His advice to other fleets setting out along this path is to make a start, avoid overcomplicating the process, and set a long-term objective “because those dates will arrive quicker than you think.”

FLEET EUROPE #110

He also recommended focusing attention on EVs with a range that satisfies the vast majority of journeys, rather than ensuring every EV is capable of the 700 to 800km range that a driver might do once or twice a year with a diesel car. “It will cost you a lot extra if you only buy cars with 100kW batteries,” said Mr Björnsson. “Many of our commercial passenger cars drive 100 to 150km per day and stop seven times per day, so we’re starting with vehicles that meet this need.” European energy company Vattenfall is practising what it preaches by converting its 4,500-vehicle fleet to run on electricity. The company generates electricity and supplies energy to millions of customers in the Nordic region and northern Europe. It even owns the electric vehicle charging business InCharge, offering smart charging solutions for home, business and public use. As a member of the EV100, Vattenfall has pledged to run a zero-emission

fleet by 2030, but sectors of its fleet will run on electricity well before this deadline. “Our 1,000 benefit cars will be electric by 2022, as current leases expire,” said Tomas Björnsson, VicePresident of E-mobility and group sponsor of internal electrification. These cars will set the tone that senior staff fully support the transition to battery power as an important step towards achieving the company’s environmental objectives, added Björnsson.

The next challenge is to find light commercial vehicles with a payload of 750kg capable of meeting Vattenfall’s business needs, although solutions to some niche areas of the fleet will be harder to introduce. “With our electricity grid activities north of the Arctic Circle we do have people working in very remote places, in extreme cold, for days at a time, so keeping batteries charged is difficult,” said Mr Björnsson.

“HOME VERSUS PUBLIC CHARGING CHANGES THE ECONOMICS” Catherine Hutt (Addison Lee Group): • Mobility Innovation Lead • 5,000 vehicles • UK

The path to zero emissions has to follow a different trajectory when the fleet is the company’s core business. For Addison Lee, a premium minicab and chauffeur drive company with 5,000 vehicles in London, environmental ambitions have to sit alongside the need for its cars to be operational 24/7. The time and cost of recharging can make or break the business plan of a pure electric vehicle, as a pilot project with five Audi eTron SUVs is revealing. “Home versus public charging changes the economics,” said Catherine Hutt, Mobility Innovation Lead, Addison Lee Group.

The company has also encountered issues where its drivers have been unable to access rapid chargers that are reserved exclusively for taxis.

It is now on a mission to convert to a zero-emission fleet, and has extended its six-month trial of the Audi e-trons for a further six months. This will also highlight any issues that winter might cause to battery efficiency.

“We want to have a conversation about chargers for commercial users being open for all commercial users and not just for taxis,” said Ms Hutt.

“We want our fleet to be zero-emission capable by 2022,” said Ms Hutt, hinting that plug-in hybrids might account for more vehicle orders in the short term until a plentiful supply of viable battery electric vehicles are available.

Addison Lee has already invested to ensure all of its vehicles comply with London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (all diesels are Euro 6), runs the capital’s largest fleet of Toyota Prius hybrid cars, and offsets all of the carbon emissions from UK journeys.

To spearhead its progress, Hutt now leads mVentures, a new division within Addison Lee Group to develop, explore and apply sustainable and environmentally progressive mobility technologies. These will include electrification, the possibilities presented

by autonomous and connected vehicles, and the practical and commercial opportunities that lie in the huge quantities of data gathered daily by the company’s fleet. Addison Lee is already lead partner in a consortium called Merge Greenwich, which is investigating the potential for autonomous ridesharing services, and is engaged in another project, code named Endeavour, which aims to launch a commercial ridesharing service in London by 2021 with 15 autonomous vehicles. Once these ideas and technologies have proved themselves in London, the goal is to roll them out through the Addison Lee Group business, said Ms Hutt.

FLEET EUROPE #110

“If someone has a home charger it can tip the balance in favour of an EV over an internal combustion engine. Any chargers we use on the street have to be rapid chargers because the time window is critical – we cannot expect drivers to sit idle. But the cost of electricity from rapid chargers is significantly more than home charging, and it also incurs VAT.”

NEW ENERGIES

“EMPLOYEES STILL FACE A COMPROMISE IN VEHICLE TYPE WHEN THEY GO FOR AN EV” “You really need to have the support of your leasing supplier and have them help you with your charging infrastructure and fleet policy,” said Mr Den Hollander.

Hans Den Hollander (Cisco): • Car Fleet Manager EMEAR • 5,500 cars • 28 countries

Demand for EVs and PHEVs then started to increase in other countries after Cisco introduced a CO2 cap on company cars that removed a number of diesel SUVs from its choice list. “We have a corporate target of reducing our worldwide greenhouse gas emissions by 60% by 2022, from a baseline of 2007, and as a European fleet we aim to be zero-carbon by 2025,” said Mr Den Hollander. This means that Cisco employees will only be able to order fully electric company cars from 2022-23. But it’s dependent on sufficient availability of EVs. Already, any corporate savings from tax, fuel and maintenance are channelled back to drivers to encourage them to go electric, but employees still face a compromise in the type of vehicle they can access, because the lease rates of electric cars are so much higher than their petrol or diesel equivalents. Drivers of cars such as the BMW 5 Series, for example, are having to downsize to the Tesla Model 3, while BMW 3 Series drivers have to consider downsizing to the Nissan Leaf. “We conducted a study in 10 European countries and found that the lease rates of electric cars are not competitive at all in most cases,” said Mr Den Hollander.

FLEET EUROPE #110

IT, networking and cybersecurity specialist Cisco added the first electric cars to its fleet in 2012, in a direct response to driver demand. The initiative originated in the Netherlands where employees had become interested in zero-emission company cars because of the zero benefit in kind tax attached to them. “We said people could order electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles but they had to install a charger at home,” said Hans Den Hollander, Car Fleet Manager EMEAR of Cisco.

“We wanted to avoid people choosing the cars for low tax reasons and then not charging them. Also, people could only choose a plug-in hybrid if they drove less than 30,000km per year, and when their commuting distance was less than 30km.” Working closely with the company’s leasing supplier, Cisco created a solution where the cost of installing a home charger could be included in the monthly lease rate, and where employees could be reimbursed for domestic electricity used to charge their cars.

As a result, Cisco drivers are still choosing PHEVs rather than battery electric cars, with the exception of the Netherlands where 75% of all new orders is BEV. But as the choice and range of pure electric models improves, and recharging networks expand, momentum is building behind zero emission cars. “People who switch to electric love the way these cars drive and are really enthusiastic about their cars,” said Mr Den Hollander.

Parcel Delivery & Last Mile Solutions Why connectivity is key for continued excellence in Last Mile customer service

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NEW ENERGIES

AFTER THE OPTIMISM, TIME FOR REALISM @DieterQuartier

BEV sales in Europe are posting double-digit growth percentages and some brands expect half of their sales to be zero-emission by 2025. Still, there is growing scepticism as to the feasibility of a mass transition to battery-electric vehicles. Time to confront the 5 major boosters with the 5 most challenging obstacles.

YES TO MASS EV UPTAKE

TCO savings potential. As prices are coming down and range is increasing, battery electric vehicles (BEV) see their Total Cost of Ownership decrease to ICE levels. Some OEMs even offer their EV models at lease rates that are on a par with a comparable petrol- or diesel-powered model.

The solution with the lowest overall CO2 emissions. This assertion is the subject of controversy because not all electricity comes from sustainable sources – neither to build the car, nor to charge an EV. As the share of sustainable energy in the power mix increases, the CO2 emissions decrease. In hydropower-rich Norway, EVs are estimated to generate 60% less CO2 over their life (source: Berylls Strategy Advisors). In coal burning Poland, the picture will be less positive. In the in-between countries, the bottom line is still in favour of EVs.

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Mass adoption goes hand in hand with sustainable energy. The more EVs on the road, the easier it is to increase the production and storage of renewable energy. EV batteries can be integrated in the power grid and store solar and wind power at off-peak times – either to use it for driving later or for discharging this power into the grid when consumption is peaking.

EV batteries can be integrated in the power grid and store solar and wind power at off-peak times.

The Mobility House has seen fleets realising savings of over ¤1,000 per year by introducing smart charging.

Motivational cars. Studies show that an increasing number of employees wish to drive an electric car. As such, companies that allow EVs in their fleet could be more attractive than companies that don’t. Pilot projects also reveal that early adopters are enthusiastic about their EV and eager to share their experience with their colleagues. Creating and supporting an EV community within your company could have a positive impact on employee satisfaction and hence loyalty.

Less downtime on the road and in the garage. Electric vehicles hardly need maintenance and are less likely to break down. Electric motors are incredibly reliable and the battery pack only requires the occasional inspection. The software to manage the battery can be updated remotely. The main reasons to visit a service centre will be tyre changes and replacing parts of the braking system and suspension. You are less likely to need a replacement vehicle, too.

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Roughly half the population in Europe does not have access to off-street parking.

Not everyone can charge at home. Roughly half the population in Europe does not have access to off-street parking, meaning they cannot charge their car at home. That is a sine qua non to make EV driving feasible, unless you can charge at the office, but that is no solution for the weekend or while on holiday.

Electric infrastructure is not ready. There aren’t enough substations – local electricity storage and distribution points – in the power grid for every family to charge their EV. “In some cases even just two BEVs charging simultaneously could bring down the substation,” automotive consultant Dean Bowkett explains. “Adding or upgrading substations can be expensive, but in most cases unnecessary as you can already do a lot with load balancing,” says The Mobility House’ MD, Marcus Fendt.

Limited maximum fuse rating. A standard house in Europe can get 70 to 80 amps maximum fuse rating. Some of the latest houses have the capacity for up to 100 amps maximum fuse rating. “An 11kW home charger, which allows you to charge your 60kWh EV in about 6 hours, uses 48 amps. That does not leave much room for any other devices to be used in your average house at the same time,” says Bowkett. Indeed, it will be a matter of planning the charging accordingly.

Electricity will become more expensive. In future, you will come home after work and discharge your car’s battery into the grid to support peak demand, when people are cooking, washing, cleaning, et cetera. During the night, your car will be charged again. “The problem is, when everybody uses the same 8-hour window to charge, there won’t be any off-peak time anymore,” reckons Bowkett. Also, when everyone switches to electric, the Treasury will miss out on excise duties and other taxes on fuel. “The easiest way out is to increase taxes on electricity, but that would stir up protest because many households cannot afford to pay more for their daily power consumption.”

There is no (semi-)public charging business case. Making money off a (semi-)public charging station is practically impossible today: the occupation and turn rates are far too low to offset the investment. Petrol stations won’t be eager to convert pumps to chargers either, according to Dean Bowkett. “Today, each pump can typically handle twelve customers per hour. Some of them come inside to purchase a drink, a snack or groceries. A DC fast charger can handle a maximum of two customers per hour. They will probably spend this time inside the café or the shop, but they won’t necessarily spend more money. In short, the economics aren’t there.”

CONCLUSION Yes, we need BEVs to fight climate change and pollution and yes, BEVs have never been more feasible, but there is work to be done on the electric infrastructure. The key is a massive integration of BEVs in the grid (V2G), which requires considerable investments and collaboration between public and corporate stakeholders.

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HOLD YOUR ELECTRIC HORSES

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FOLLOW THE EASY GUIDE TO MOBILITY Yves Helven

Unfortunately, there is no easy guide to mobility, but captivating titles have the advantage of catching the reader’s attention. Here are, nonetheless, a few tips if you’re planning to implement mobility solutions. Learn about the mobility supply chain It’s almost impossible to keep track of all the mobility suppliers and really understand what’s available out there. A good tip is to create buckets according to the offering before digging deeper. Micro-mobility is one such bucket: usually scooters or bikes, micro-mobility can either be defined as means of transport for one, maximum two people or by its distance of utilisation, which is anything up to five miles. Then we have car-centric mobility, which includes taxi services, ridehailing, ridesharing and, as it’s becoming more popular, ultra-short term rental. Next, we have the public transit bucket, including mainly public transport, but also shuttle services and on-demand people carriers.

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All of these are single-solution mobility providers. Where things get more serious is on the aggregator level. These providers aim to put as many as possible mobility solutions on one platform. The user will indicate from where to where a trip is supposed to be and the aggregator platform will propose multiple solutions and their pricing. Whilst it’s a challenge for aggregators to integrate mobility solutions – there are strategic, economic and technical hurdles to overcome – they are appealing to fleet managers, for the

There are no mobility aggregators around that offer solutions in each city.

right reasons. No need to deal with too many financially unstable companies, no need to put contracts in place for each provider. Unfortunately, there’s no aggregator around that offers solutions in each city.

From Fleet Management to Asset Management Let’s make one thing very clear from the beginning: mobility is not an alternative to a car. It fills in the gaps of company car utilisation. The first job is still to get the most out of your company cars. You’ve probably negotiated good deals with your OEMs, fuel providers and leasing companies, so now it’s time to look at asset utilisation. Do you really need that many

cars? Do you have an idea of the utilisation percentage of your fleet? Chances are that the ratio is at best around 35% and your fleet is in reality a benefit fleet rather than a tool-oftrade fleet. Now it’s time to have a look at eligibility. Of course, it’s tough to push an eligibility review through the works council, so you need to be well prepared and here’s you do it: connect your cars. Vehicle connectivity is different from telematics. It means that you won’t be capturing or sharing private data from your employees, but only occupation (who is driving?) and utilisation (how much is the asset used?) of the vehicle. As a bonus, you’ll receive some useful

cars come in, or, put in more fancy wording: become your own mobility provider. You know now – because you’re measuring the utilisation rate of your vehicles – how many vehicles you really need. Some of these will be dedicated, the other ones can be shared. There are connectivity providers on the market that include a pool car management reservation tool in their software. Pool cars offer a lot more flexibility than dedicated cars. If your company plans to electrify, pool cars are a great place to start. Cars will be charging in the company car park, so it’s also easy to install charging infrastructure. Fleet managers can learn from the logistics industry, where assets are managed independently of their drivers to optimise their utilisation. Some fleet managers even plan to transform their full tool-of-trade fleet into pool cars.

Look for mobility aggregation Your fleet is now connected and split between dedicated cars and shared cars. You also have software in place to manage them. This is the right moment to start thinking about mobility. As mentioned above, mobility solutions are perfect to fill in the gaps. Your first go-to mobility solution is public transport because it covers the biggest distances. Gradually fill your mobility needs up with car-centric and micro-mobility. A good solution is to talk directly to an aggregator, if there’s one in your locations.

Connectivity is not a big investment – give or take $5 to 10 on subscription and another $75 to 100 for the hardware – but the return is amazing, if used wisely. There are providers on the market that offer your drivers a mobile phone application and a cool operating system for yourself. Gone are the spreadsheets and the 1998 Access database.

The inevitable next step: pool cars It’s not because employees don’t need a dedicated car that they won’t need access to a car. This is where pool

Mobility providers offer transaction-based solutions, which means that you’ll be paying per trip. You might want to opt for subscription models, because they allow you to budget expenses rather than being surprised by excessive mobility consumption. Some of your employees might even agree to return their company car in exchange for a decent mobility budget.

Also, the transaction output from mobility providers is, at best, a list of rides and their cost – not really what your accounting department likes to work with. So, you might consider a new type of vendor in the mobility ecosystem: a transaction manager. These providers analyse your mobility transactions and allocate them to the right tax bucket and push them into Concur or directly into SAP (or whatever other ERP).

Mobility is not an alternative to a car. It fills in the gaps of company car utilisation.

CONVERGENCE IN GROUND TRANSPORTATION During the second session of the Smart Mobility Institute in September 2019, leading fleet managers and mobility experts discussed ways to find convergences between all different ground transportation departments. Read more on the Fleet Europe website.

Control the transactions Mobility businesses are conceived for consumers, not for businesses. They almost exclusively link to a credit card and deduct transactions one by one. This obviously doesn’t work for corporate clients, especially when

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technical data from the car, such as mileage and mechanical failures.

considering that the same trip can be either commuting, professional or private, potentially with three different taxation treatments. Take into account that any employee can generate multiple transactions per day and you’ll conclude quickly that this generates a lot of work.

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NEW WAYS OF GETTING AROUND Frank Jacobs & Mark Sutcliffe

How do you get from A to B? It’s an ancient question, but the answers are increasingly innovative. Here’s a small sample of how both suppliers and customers are getting around in new and surprising ways.

Tell us about an innovation in corporate mobility that you’ve recently introduced

Which problem did this innovation solve, or which improvement did it provide?

What’s the uptake of this solution, and how do you see it evolve in the future?

Why is it ‘innovative’? In other words: Why couldn’t it have been introduced, say, five years ago?

How will you measure its success?

Daan Bieleveld, Category Manager Mobility, DSM

“We offered a supplier-based solution to our employees where we are supported to 50/50% share savings, in case the employee makes a more cost-attractive choice, which is often also a more sustainable one.”

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“When you share benefits, people are more likely to engage and contribute. In mobility and benefits, the emotional aspect versus hard data (or lack thereof) can be difficult. This solution helps us to achieve desired behaviour, while maintaining freedom of choice and the same policy levels.”

Daan Bieleveld, DSM: “When you share benefits, people are more likely to engage and contribute.”

“We implemented this in the US, we may expand to other regions. The idea itself may be expandable to other sub-categories within mobility, or across industries.”

“The idea of sharing benefits is of course not new, but specifying it for one sub-category in mobility, with a supplier managing all quotes and managing all the savings: that’s relatively new.” “It’s already a success – in terms of sustainability, savings and employee satisfaction. And it’s triggering creativity in terms of us re-using the concept elsewhere.”

Laura Gobbis, Travel and Fleet Procurement Manager, Luxottica Group

“Luxottica is very focused on sustainability, with a variety of initiatives rolled out in our China and Brazil subsidiaries, and in the Italian HQ – three things specifically: an annual employee bonus based on public-transport and sharedcar usage; a last-mile shuttle free for all employees; and app-based, self-booking carsharing for business trips.”

“We’ve opted for these innovations for both environmental reasons – to reduce congestion and pollution – and because they made business sense: they save time and reduce cost.”

Laura Gobbis, Luxottica: “The bonus system is a strong motivational tool.”

used for 280 trips per month, for an average of 150km per trip. That translates to an occupancy rate of 85%.”

“Impossible five years ago? Well, it certainly is a long road, and requires multiple mindset changes: from personal to shared car, from car to public transport, from office booking to self-booking, from longterm to single-day car usage…”

“Our innovation trend uses top managers as opinion leaders, plus we find that the bonus system is a strong motivational tool.”

“Focusing on our shared cars, we have fitted 25 vehicles with black boxes that enable sharing. They are

Spokesperson for American Express “We take a very close look at the developments in this field and our business consulting team researches and talks to clients to identify their needs within the corporate travel area.” In 2018, American Express launched American Express Go in the US.

American Express Go is a digital solution to help mid-sized and large companies handle business for temporary workers, recruits, and employees on-the-go without corporate cards. However, the solution is not limited to travel arrangements.

3 According to American Express, travel managers will need to become increasingly IT-literate in order to manage costs more efficiently.

“We’re finding that more and more companies are considering flexible mobility solutions to meet the overall mobility trends and individual needs of their employees in line with a cost-efficient corporate travel management. By 2025, the marketplace will look quite different.”

“We think the role of the mobility manager will evolve quite dramatically because it’s becoming easier to make bookings online direct with the airline or accommodation provider. New ways of managing data are coming on stream so travel managers will need to become increasingly IT-literate in order to manage costs more efficiently.”

“More large companies – us at American Express included – are using teleconferencing. But that isn’t a substitute for personal interaction, so we don’t expect a reduction of business travel as a consequence. They’re complementary, not competing channels.” FLEET EUROPE #110

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Lonneke van der Horst, Marketing & Strategy Director, ALD Automotive Netherlands

“ALD Move, developed with Microsoft, is our first MaaS solution. It provides daily mobility support for commuters, using multisource data – the agenda of the day, company objectives, real-time traffic, weather data, and personal preferences. ALD Move has three core services: a personal travel assistant, an instant route planner and a dedicated chatbot.”

Lonneke van der Horst, ALD: “ALD Move has a personal travel assistant, an instant route planner and a dedicated chatbot.”

“Companies want to save cost and reduce CO2. Drivers want maximum mobility. ALD Move aims at a holistic, flexible approach to commuter travel. The user gets access to various modes: car, e-bike, public transport. Via a credit system, the app reinforces corporate mobility policies and smart mobility choices.”

“We’re starting this year in the Netherlands, with 100 users. We already have two customers using the solution, with two more following shortly. Next year, we’ll explore the appetite in other markets. Plus, there are many opportunities to broaden the scope, for example by adding carsharing or a payment function.”

“We provide users with the right mobility advice – via our chatbot, and other channels - thanks to our data and intelligence input. Our advice improves based on usage. Our strategic partnership with Microsoft means we had access to their latest technology and Azure cloud solution.”

“We have defined KPIs on usage, user satisfaction and ability to change mobility behaviour. Potential features include a wallet functionality, integration of carsharing or carpooling.”

Amélie Phélip, Mobility Director, Arval

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“We are continuously widening the range of our mobility solutions that include already in France for example an integrated mobility offer for employees, in Switzerland a multimodal commuting package, in the Netherlands and in Belgium a MaaS solution and several other mobility initiatives in many geographies. We have now launched a new version of Arval Car Sharing, a corporate international solution.” “Relying on a highly secure system of connected cars, our digital carsharing solution makes mobility management easier and more efficient, with fast, convenient and keyless access for drivers to a pool of cars. In combination with our telematics solution, ease of monitoring will result in cost savings and increased performance and best-inclass user experience.”

Amélie Phélip, Arval: “70% of large corporates consider using at least one mobility alternative.”

“Arval launched its first carsharing solution in France already in 2009. Our international solution is live in Italy and Belgium, with pilots conducted elsewhere. It will soon be available in many other markets. According to our Arval Mobility Observatory barometer for 2019, 70% of large corporates consider using at least one mobility alternative in the next three years.” “Arval Car Sharing is a 100% digital international solution, answering the needs of companies, drivers and fleet managers alike; it reduces cost significantly and delivers on CSR goals – both in terms of electric and shared mobility.”

“The utilisation rate of our shared solution is the best indicator, and is already high, contributing to productivity gains and costs savings.”

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WHY MOBILITY SUBSCRIPTIONS ARE FIT FOR YOU Yves Helven

Mobility providers cater for consumer rather than for corporate clients.

Supply stack

Mobility subscriptions

Most of the mobility vendors offer single-city solutions rather than regionwide ones. This creates a whole new level of sourcing and contract management complexity. Only few corporate clients will be willing to contract dozens of small local vendors and take risks on business continuity, just for the sake of offering mobility solutions to employees. Working with aggregators will eventually solve part of the challenge, but here again, they’re not yet ready to offer services across Europe.

There are roughly 2 types of subscriptions: pre-paid models that give users access to a certain amount of mobility consumption and credit/debit cardbased models with an expenditure limit. Even if the credit/debit card model offers easy access to multiple mobility solutions, and therefore overcome the obstacle of regionalisation of services, they still don’t solve the tax issues with comforting certainty. The feedback from corporate clients on the credit card model is biased; they have trouble understanding what benefits these cards can offer in comparison with corporate credit cards, that feed easily into approval processes and Concur expense management.

Transactions Mobility consumption is transaction based, which means that every single trip generates an invoice. Rather than being an improvement on an operational level, mobility generates additional workload for finance, accounting, fleet managers and line managers to approve and process a potentially very high number of transactions. Corporate clients also need to know whether a specific transaction is related to commuting, professional usage or private usage, each of them generating a different tax treatment and payroll flow.

Public transport Another hurdle of mobility subscriptions are the public transport subscriptions. Considered to be the backbone of future mobility, public transport providers offer subscription models that are always easier to manage and cheaper than the sum of individual tickets. Unfortunately, these are also difficult to standardise, as most providers offer a variety of options, depending

on zones, time and type of passenger. Currently, all of the mobility providers offer at best ticket based solutions rather than packages that includes public transport subscriptions.

MOBILITY NEEDS TRANSACTION MANAGEMENT Even if subscription-based models offer advantages and are usually priced a bit below the TCO of a typical lease vehicle, they don’t overcome the main obstacles for corporate clients. These can however be solved by putting transaction management software in place – a new service offering on the mobility market. It’s time for the mobility supply chain and the corporate client to work together towards a dedicated enterprise offering.

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One of the reasons for the lack of general adoption of mobility, is the fact that mobility providers cater for consumers, rather than for corporate clients. Facilitating for business clients requires a different set-up in budgeting, invoicing and contract management. Can subscription models overcome the limitations of a consumer product?

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IS AI THE NEXT GAME CHANGER FOR CONGESTION? Shane Curran

With around 1.3 billion vehicles in the world at present, and forecasts for over 2 billion within 12 or 15 years, traffic congestion is shaping as the biggest hurdle for the fleet manager to overcome in the next few years. Whether autonomous vehicles will solve or exacerbate that problem is a major talking point among industry experts, but one thing is certain, Artificial Intelligence has a major role to play.

The congestion problem In February this year, INRIX released the 2018 Global Traffic Scorecard which showed, among other things, that the last mile of travel in London during peak hours will happen at an average of 7mph. That’s around the speed that a horse and cart would have travelled 150 years ago.

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The same study suggested that a driver would have lost 227 hours of time over the year to traffic congestion. That’s nearly six weeks’ work.

One problem confronting autonomous cars is over-reliance on technology.

Professor Currie says that referring to transport network companies such as Uber and Lyft as “sharing” is a misnomer. While ridesharing certainly has its benefits, it’s generally not “shared mobility” as that would imply shared occupancy. A relative rarity.

Ups and downs, here and there

For the corporate fleet, this represents an enormous opportunity for costs savings – a 10% reduction of time spent in congestion could represent hundreds of dollars per employee. Is autonomy going to be the answer?

Meanwhile European mapping company Here says that there will be some benefit to autonomy in the short term and significant benefit in the long term, but they’re not quite so sanguine about the 5-20 year time frame.

A difference of opinion

Here says that the two main factors will be the level of autonomy enabled and the level of adoption achieved. In a report released 18 months ago, Here says that short-term gains in areas like adaptive cruise control and lane departure warning are the first steps

Graham Currie, Professor in Transport Engineering at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, remains sceptical about the benefits of autonomous cars for congestion and says that it’s based on “the shared mobility lie.”

toward full autonomy. These initiatives are demonstrably reducing traffic accidents and thereby congestion.

Getting worse before it gets better Here goes on to suggest that the mid-term outcomes are much less predictable as a small number of autonomous cars enter the traffic pool alongside millions of traditional vehicles. Here suggests that the outcomes are unpredictable with traditional drivers being surprised by autonomous vehicles and owners of autonomous cars becoming over-reliant on the technology. In the long-term though the outlook is much better. Here expects that within 50 years governments will prohibit manually controlled vehicles from public roads and the result will be a much smoother flow of traffic.

AI, MACHINE LEARNING AND DEEP LEARNING Are Artificial Intelligence, machine learning and deep learning the same or is there a difference?

provide the vehicle with a base from which to create expectations.

Practical AI - What’s coming next Ovidiu Radu, founder of Artificial Intelligence developer Alien Intelligence and the AI-powered fleet management system OviDrive, says that we have only just begun to see the real benefits associated with Artificial Intelligence. “Just as an example, our fleet management system uses machine learning to decide which maintenance to approve and which to reject. Maintenance is an area with plenty of data - vehicles are being serviced or repaired every minute - and we can use that data to take the human factor out of the equation.”

Artificial Intelligence – the last piece of the puzzle? One of the widely misunderstood aspects of autonomy is the factor of connectivity. Autonomous vehicles are able to visualise their surroundings but with connectivity they are also able to know in advance what vehicles around them will be doing.

“The AI means that mundane tasks are assigned to the machine, rather than having a staff member review each maintenance request. The machine has an encyclopaedic knowledge of what’s been approved in the past and can use that to decide what to approve this time around.”

The future is bright

While this allows the vehicle a greater sense of its surroundings, it creates some problems of its own with the volume of data generated. The vehicle must be able to understand and use the data provided by connectivity in a rapid-fire yet meaningful way. This is where AI plays a big role.

Future applications of AI are likely to surprise many, with new initiatives underway all over the world. In September, the Chinese conglomerate Alibaba announced the launch of “Smart Bus Routes”. The routes work based on an application that indicates that a user wants to catch a bus, then assigns a seat to the user and designs a route based on the signed users.

Using the principles of machine learning, the data provided by connected vehicles can lead not only to better in-the-moment decisions but can

For autonomous vehicles the further development of AI is a critical step, but the full question of benefit is yet to be answered.

Machine learning is a kind of subset of AI. It’s the idea that the machine can teach itself by considering precedents. The machine learns that red, round, smooth-skinned fruit is an apple. Next time it sees a red, round, smooth-skinned fruit it can make a pretty good guess at what it is. In the same way that machine learning is a subset of AI, deep learning is a subset of machine learning. Deep learning takes the approach so much further by using large volumes of data. Our machine can now see that it’s an apple but with enough data, can also reasonably distinguish a Delicious Apple from a Fuji Apple. For cars, this deep learning approach has been fundamental to teaching the vehicle to recognise the enormous variety of obstacles and instructions that appear on a roadway.

“Data provided by connected vehicles can lead not only to better in-the-moment decisions but can provide the vehicle with a base from which to create expectations.”

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Artificial Intelligence allows vehicles to detect the motion around them and learn from what they detect.

In fact, there are differences that matter and for autonomous driving they matter a great deal. Perhaps the best way to think of AI is as a generic descriptor of machines doing things that require decisions. Doing things that we might consider “smart”. This can be pretty basic– as simple as programming a computer to make a specific response to a specific input.

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AI, AN EV’S REAL FUEL @DieterQuartier

Now plenty more EVs are about to roam our European streets, we must ensure that we make optimum use of them – on the road, but also at the power socket. That’s where digitisation, big data and artificial intelligence come in.

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In combination with the adaptive cruise assist, the Audi e-tron’s efficiency assist can brake and accelerate predictively.

As energy is increasingly sourced renewably, we are faced with more volatility in the grid: wind and sun are difficult to control. What we need are solutions to store this energy when it’s in oversupply and to release it when demand peaks. You have guessed it: EVs are a crucial piece of the energy puzzle, with their large batteries capable of absorbing many kilowatt hours. Unfortunately, vehicles have the unpractical habit of moving – and not necessarily in the same direction, let alone at the same time or in a fixed pattern.

Predictability is key The challenge resides in mapping these usage patterns – trips, driving time, idle time and location, energy need – so you can predict where and when you have supply and demand. Indeed, predictability is key. That’s where AI steps in – at least when you are talking about the big picture, i.e. on a regional, national or even international level. Individual fleets and local authorities can already achieve a lot with digitisation and telematics today, says Marcus Fendt, MD of The Mobility House.

“Look at traffic lights. All you need to increase traffic flow is connect vehicles with infrastructure. In short, the first step is digitisation, the second one is sharing all the data, to which you then apply statistic optimisation. There are so many things that need to happen before you can put AI to good use.” So, for fleets, predictability of charging seems a manageable challenge. It becomes a whole different ballgame when you widen the scope to all stakeholders – fleet owners, EV drivers, charging point owners, grid operators

– who have different goals, needs and incentives, while they operate in highly dynamic environments. And let’s not forget the uncertainties around future energy demand and production, as Emmanouil S. Rigas from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki explains in his paper entitled Managing Electric Vehicles in the Smart Grid Using Artificial Intelligence: A Survey.

Congestion and load management

Congestion management is indeed another area in which AI can play a role. It starts with routing EVs to available charging stations proactively, based on predicted occupation but also considering the preferences and needs of the driver. It is also a matter of figuring out where to add charging points as well as their nature (AC or DC) based on traffic flow patterns and idle time. A less tangible but at least as tantalising application of AI has to do with load management, i.e. control the charging of EVs so that peaks and possible overloads of the grid can be avoided, while minimising electricity cost. On top of that, algorithms help manage the unused capacity of the EV’s battery, which can be discharged into the grid to respond to electricity demand of various locations in the network. The latter is faced with a major challenge: transitioning from fixed, controllable sources to a multitude of intermittent renewable energy sources.

AI on the road Apart from charging-related AI, there is also “on road” AI, such as energy-efficient routing and range maximisation, as Rigas writes. “Algorithms and mechanisms have been developed to route EVs in order to minimise energy loss and maximise energy harvested during a trip. In particular, building upon existing search algorithms, solutions have been developed to adapt to the needs

AI can help prevent charging queues at busy places. and the characteristics of EVs, so as to take advantage of their energy recuperation ability and maximise the driving range.” The Audi e-tron is a nice example. The Four Rings have developed a highly intelligent way of recuperating energy. The so-called efficiency assist uses radar sensors, camera images, navigation data and Car-to-X information to detect the traffic environment and the route. In combination with the adaptive cruise assist, the efficiency assist can also brake and accelerate the electric SUV predictively. Backing the assist systems is the central driver assistance controller, which continuously computes an exact model of the environment. You could also implement AI within a vehicle’s operational software, where it would continuously monitor battery performance and health, circulating data back to improve product performance, as StoreDot CEO Dr Doron Myersdorf highlights. “Moreover, by creating smarter batteries with embedded sensing capabilities, and with self-healing functionalities, the battery-management system can be aware of their ‘state of health’ and can even rejuvenate battery cells or modules when necessary.”

Convergence with smart cities Finally, companies had better start realising that it is in their interest to work together with local authorities – not only in the smart charging scene,

but also to make people and goods transit efficient through large urban areas by sharing data. “We’re investing heavily into big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning as well as into electric vehicle technologies. We see a convergence with fleets and smart cities and communities. It’s about the ability to move people faster through a city,” explains Edward Kulperger, VP Europe at Geotab. “For example, we have programmes in Las Vegas where an organisation overlays our data with other data sets. This allows them to direct the emergency vehicles to the scene of the accident a lot quicker – also because they can change the traffic lights to open traffic and roads. We believe we are at the cusp of the smart city evolution.”

There are many things that need to happen before you can put AI to good use. FLEET EUROPE #110

Norwegians will tell you: it’s no fun having to wait your turn before you can hook up and charge your car. The number of EVs on their roads has grown faster than the number of public charging points, causing queues at busy places. People arguing about whose turn it was to charge: it’s a sight that is hardly imaginable in the rest of Europe, but with EV sales spiking, that is about to change.

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YOUR NEW PERSONAL ASSISTANT: AI Yves Helven

To learn more about Artificial Intelligence at use in fleet management, we travelled to the other side of the world to Perth, Western Australia, where we meet AI wizard Ovi Radu. Ovi runs OviDrive, a fleet management application that is powered by AI. One FTE can manage up to 1,000 fully unbundled vehicles in OviDrive – and this is exactly why it’s so great for fleet managers. But first, some questions for Ovi.

Ovi, what is AI? “The capability of Artificial Intelligence is constantly evolving but the concept has always remained the same: teach machines to think and act like humans. I like to compare AI and the way it learns with children and the way they learn. Children grow up having assimilated knowledge and experiences and become individuals with a profession and unique character, or (if we look at it from a different perspective) they become very good at some things but not good at others. In a similar way, AI evolves by assimilating data (albeit much faster than humans can) and through an incredibly accelerated process of “learn-try-test-repeat” it can become exceptionally good at very specific tasks, whilst remaining completely oblivious to others. Where it surpasses humans, is in its capability to immediately be exposed to a different data set and continue adding pieces to its digital brain puzzle to begin linking tasks together and perform increasingly more complicated activities.”

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What is AI’s place in Industry 4.0? “As humanity evolves to focus our attention on solving problems through creativity in all aspects of life and work, AI will be a much more efficient candidate for the more logical tasks we have to perform today.” In other words, and this is what Industry 4.0 is about, Internet of Things – or connectivity – allows machines to communicate with each other, which removes the human factor.

Ovi Radu, OviDrive: “One FTE can manage up to 1,000 fully unbundled vehicles in OviDrive.” Automation and connectivity go hand in hand, as it can handle workflows (one machine to the next). Add Artificial Intelligence to the mix and not only are workflows automated, but also the decisions to start and stop workflows. Complex causality (“if this, then that”) that could previously only be managed by humans, can now be done by the machines themselves.

How did you come to combine AI with a fleet management tool? “We spoke briefly before about data as being a crucial component for AI training. Fleet management as an industry segment is perfectly positioned at the crossroads of automotive data. So to us, fleet management

has an exceptional potential to take maximum advantage of AI’s power. Most tasks performed when managing fleets of vehicles at scale are logical, these logical human activities generate well-structured data sets for training AI.” A big part of today’s fleet managers’ jobs is indeed repetitive: checking invoices, controlling driver behaviour, giving approvals for unforeseen costs to leasing vendors. At the end of the day, even if decisions and approvals are made by the fleet managers, they will apply a similar scrutiny to each of those actions. If consistent, these can be replicated by AI.

When approvals for vendors (repair shops, service centres, tyre shops) can be automated, the obstacle of expertise and workload gradually disappears as the machines learn from the fleet manager’s behaviour.

“In fleet management, we aim AI at many types of tasks with a goal to automate and increase efficiency, but if I was to choose an example it would be the decision-making process for service and maintenance control. AI can understand part life expectancies and cost expectancies, link that knowledge to live vehicle sensor data and you have a machine that can monitor tens of thousands of vehicles with a sole purpose of predicting maintenance events. There are further logical extensions to that, but this is a simple example.” Undeniably, the use of AI will allow fleet managers to revisit the option of unbundling services. When approvals and relationships with vendors (repair shops, service centres, tyre shops) can be entirely automated, the obstacle of expertise and workload gradually disappears as the machines learn from the fleet manager’s behaviour.

Is AI reliable? “The short answer is yes. Undoubtedly so. However, lots of people make the assumption that AI is as capable as a human is today. That is definitely not the case. AI is reliable when assessed for a specific type of task that it has been trained for. And its reliability is directly proportionate to the quality

of data it has been trained with. When the recipe is right, AI far exceeds human reliability.” In other words, as AI is a fairly recently introduction into the fleet management business, it still has a lot to learn from the fleet manager community. Leasing companies might be able to feed a huge amount of data into AI learning, but it’s unlikely that they will share this intelligence, that has been carefully built up over years of operations, with the community.

Accepting AI requires a change of mindset – do you have tips for people who start using AIpowered tools? “Embrace the idea that AI will not replace yourself or your workforce. AI will free you or your business from the shackles of repetitive tasks and allow you to innovate, create and push the business forward. Humans solve problems, machines help us get to that solution faster.” AI is not a threat to the fleet manager’s job – rather the opposite. It creates time and space for strategy, innovation and control. As IA and digitisation are entering all industries, fleet managers need to understand the future mobility needs of their companies, and transit from fleets of dedicated cars to more flexible models. AI creates the time to do this.

Is OviDrive unique in its usage of AI in fleet management? “To us, AI equals data and data equals AI. Our AI approach started with solving the problem of data flow and data structure. At OviDrive we have a bold vision of creating a complete mobility data ecosystem feeding our AI minions, we call it a Mobility Operating System. Traditionally, fleet data has been segregated, disconnected, stored and forgotten. Our goal was to connect all data arteries: vehicles and their sensors, digital driver profiles and driving behaviour, events and incidents, vehicle lifecycle plans and budgets, mobility suppliers and products, payments, transactions and financial control. This approach powers our unique AI strategy to create end-to-end neural connections and automate tasks spanning acquisition, uptime and maintenance control, utilisation and TCO, disposal.”

AI creates time and space for strategy, innovation and control.

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Can you give some practical examples of how AI does what a person used to do?

REMARKETING

NEW RULES RESHAPE THE REMARKETING GAME @DieterQuartier

Remarketing used to be “easy”: Diesel was a safe bet on most markets and RVs were boosted by the usual suspects like leather and satnav. Changing powertrain policies as well as new technologies are complicating things, but as new sales channels and markets open up, so do new opportunities.

Panel debate about remarketing and the powertrain evolution at the 2018 Remarketing Forum with (from left to right) Frédéric Van Heems (ALD), Sebastian Fuchs (Manheim), Fritz Hackl (EAIVT), Renaud Lafleuriel (FCA), moderated by Alexandrine Breton des Loÿs and Jean-Pierre Gauthier (Argus).

For the sixth year in a row, the Fleet Europe Remarketing Forum provides professionals with information and expertise about the trends that are shaping the vehicle remarketing business.

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Keynote presentations by industry experts are alternated by debates uniting various stakeholders. Given the relatively compact format, there is also plenty of space for interaction between the room and the stage. The Fleet Europe Remarketing Board members, who were closely involved in building and developing this year’s programme, explain what makes each session worth your while.

Managing diesel and EV risk A key theme at this year’s Remarketing Forum is the shift in powertrains. The rise of the one usually means the fall of the other. “With the third wave of BEVs, which come with longer range and mostly more attractive list prices, we currently see more chances than risk for RV development of BEVs in most Western European markets for 2025,” stresses Christof Engelskirchen, Chief Economist at Autovista Group. “Under this scenario, RVs for Diesel will decline between -1% and -8% between today and 2025 in Western Europe, depending on country and segment. With most of the market correction having taken place in Germany, it will

be at the low end of this range, but France will be at the high end.” An important element in the RV equation is legislation, which today is pushing diesel aside, even though recent research by Emission Analytics shows that since the introduction of WLTP and RDE the latest Euro 6d-Temp diesel engines are incomparably cleaner than their predecessors. That calls for a deep-dive and a debate on stage. The time seems ripe to look at a medium-to-long-term alternative for diesel: hydrogen. It combines the benefits of an electric motor with those of a fuel that can be produced locally and sustainably while guaranteeing easy filling and sufficient range.

Changing business models: B2B, B2C, C2C The ability to adopt new business models is the key to success in the remarketing business. “As from the start of the first Remarketing Forum in Hamburg in 2014, the digital revolution has been a topic on the agenda every year,” says Johan Verbois, Managing Partner at 5S Consulting. “The session called The Digital Reality Check will give answers to how this digital evolution has been implemented and how used car customers are finding their way in the digital B2C world.” A topic for debate is direct versus indirect B2C remarketing, for which Fleet Europe has invited experts from CarNext.com, Spoticar, Arval and eBay. Last but not least, there is the C2C business – until now relatively uncharted territory but a channel not to be underestimated or neglected. “As the used-car business has a strong impact on new vehicle sales, on their residual values and stock management at OEMs, intermediaries, mobility providers and retailers, new business models are being developed as digital solutions are reducing the barriers of entry for existing and new entrants, who are venturing into the traditional usedcar markets but also tap into the vast potential of the C2C business,” explains Marcel De Rycker, Managing Director International Warranty Holdings.

Outside the European borders Today vehicles are floating more or less freely between the European countries according to where the demand and prices are best. “At the same time, most players in the market have a European approach which aligns most processes and systems. It is important to look outside the EU and see what we can learn from other markets and how the trends outside Europe will influence our daily business,” explains Morten Holmsten, Global Director Autorola Marketplace. What is to expect from the Russian market? Will the trade agreements with the US have any influence on international remarketing? What can we learn from the Chinese market? What happens on the Turkish market and will it open up towards Europe? And finally, what will be the impact of Brexit in the European market? These questions have never been more relevant and will be discussed elaborately at the Remarketing Forum.

How technology maximises residual values There is no denying that new technologies impact remarketability. They should therefore guide your RV setting, procurement strategies and company car policies, says Jörg Höhner, Managing Director Central Europe at Groupe Argus.

On the one hand, it’s about knowing which features are positive RV influencers – is it still satnav, leather seats, sunroof, alloy wheels? Or is it shifting towards advanced connectivity and driver assistance systems? On the other hand, new technologies are impacting the way customers search for their used car.

Mileage fraud: the battle goes on Odometers are still being tampered with in Europe. “One of our deliverables is correct mileages across Europe. We aim to direct and guide the industry on a possible way of implementing correct mileage through an easy to implement system,” says Wolfgang Reinhold, Chairman of the Board of CARA, the Car Remarketing Association Europe. ”The Car Remarketing Forum is important for CARA. It is a great platform to contact existing and new people who have the same business interest,” he concludes. For more information on the above topics and the Fleet Europe Remarketing Forum, please visit summit.fleeteurope.com.

2019 FLEET EUROPE CAR REMARKETING AWARD: MEET THE FINALISTS

Marcel De Rycker, Managing Director, IWS (left), presented the 2018 Car Remarketing Award to Bertrand de Techtermann, EU Operations Director, BCA (centre), and Siebo Horenberg, European Product Manager Transport, BCA (right).

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Innovation that fuels efficiency gains and transparency within the remarketing process or contributes to the margin realised on the vehicles: that is what the Fleet Europe Car Remarketing Award wants to celebrate. Out of the myriad applicants, including start-ups and smaller traders, the jury – consisting of members of the Fleet Europe Remarketing Board – has selected 5 finalists. Scan the QR code and discover them here!

www.kia.com

Niro goes electric.

Introducing the new Kia e-Niro. The latest entry in the Kia Electrified range. There’s a new EV in town and it’s ready to roll. The new Kia e-Niro comes with a fully electric range of up to 455 km, spacious interior, the latest charging technology, and a 7-year warranty. Plenty of reasons to say that there’s nothing like a Niro.

*Max. 150,000 km vehicle warranty. Valid in all EU member states (plus Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Gibraltar). Deviations according to the valid guarantee conditions, e.g. for paint and equipment, subject to local terms and conditions. The WLTP combined cycle range for the e-Niro is 455 kilometres (282 miles) for the long-range 64 kWh battery pack, and 289 kilometres (179 miles) for the standard (39.2 kWh) battery pack. The specified driving range values were determined according to the legally prescribed measurement procedures (EU) 2017/1153. The above values have been tested in the new WLTP, Worldwide Harmonized Light vehicle Test Procedure, test cycle and converted back to NEDC, New European Driving Cycle, in addition measured according to the RDE, Real Driving Emissions method.