During this year’s Fleet Europe Forum’s closing breakfast on November 20 in Rome, the Corporate Vehicle Observatory’s director Alessandro Pigazzi disclosed interesting evolutions in how mobility, safety, alternative energies and telematics are perceived, fuelling a lively debate between 6 mobility experts.
As a Think Tank initiated by Arval, the Corporate Vehicle Observatory (CVO) wants to be an open knowledge-sharing platform delivering expert views on fleet industry trends. Celebrating its 10th anniversary, the CVO Barometer offers a fleet trend analysis across 15 European countries via 4,800 interviews with corporate fleet professionals. During his presentation entitled “CVO Barometer 2005-2015, Past and Future of Corporate Mobility” Alessandro Pigazzi (Director of Arval Consulting and CVO) highlighted the main trends.
One of the remarkable evolutions in recent years is the implementation of car sharing in 22% of the large fleets, compared to only 5% in 2012. The influence of the sharing economy and the need for sustainable mobility were seen as key drivers. Interestingly, 41% of the interviewed fleet professionals believe that mobile apps can significantly support fleet management practises, whereas the intention to implement telematics has hardly changed between 2011 and 2015, triggering a vigorous discussion amongst the assembled experts.
Towards zero emissions, accidents, ownership
Panel member and ‘The Mobility Revolution’ author Lukas Neckermann opened the debate on what to expect for 2020. The goal and responsibility for the industry? “To evolve towards zero emissions, zero accidents and zero ownership whilst taking into account the shifting attitude towards corporate cars. The biggest challenge for both OEMs and Fleet Managers, who are actually mutating into Mobility Managers, is the fact that company cars are no longer perceived as a perk.”
Embracing the self-driving car is key in achieving the abovementioned triple objective. The self-driving car is a technological fact – the only thing holding it back seems to be the liability conundrum. Representing the OEMs, Frank Meijer (Hyundai Motor Europe FCEV) claimed that “autonomous vehicles are not the entire solution, just like EVs and PHEVs are not the only answer.” Arval’s Chief Commercial Officer Bart Beckers concurred: “in the short run, it is up to the leasing companies and their clients to change driver behaviour and decrease the number of accidents.”
Get the drivers on board
Prof. Ing. Fabio Orecchini, Director of the Dipartimento di Meccanica ed Energetica and Director of the Center of Automotive Research and Evolution (CARe), elaborated on the changing relationship between driver and car: “De drivers of tomorrow are growing up in a digitalised world with joysticks, touch screens, voice and even gesture control – electronic interfaces, in short. They are less refractory to adopt the autonomous car than generation X, that fosters a more mechanical, tangible relationship with cars.”
In driving down the accident rate and TCO whilst preserving mobility, the connected car and telematics have an important role to play, too, as explained by PSA Head of International Corporate Sales Ludovic Musy: “OEMs, lease companies and telematics developers should team up to test and evaluate as much solutions as possible. It is a joint effort.” Bart Beckers couldn’t agree more: “Telematics is and integrated Fleet Management tool. All stakeholders should work together to avoid double investment costs. Moreover, the driver must be convinced of the advantages of monitored driving. By 2020, our entire fleet is to equipped with telematics devices.”