Electrifying fleets is just part of it – real change comes from rethinking use, writes the President of Custom Fleet.
When we talk about the future of transport the world is undergoing a huge amount of transformation. The key is to build towards a more sustainable future and the fleet sector in many ways sits at the forefront of that transformation.
First of all, the most important thing to remember is transport’s primary role is to move people and goods around as effectively as possible. What the world now wants to do is to ensure we’re doing that more cleanly and productively.
Right now, there are a couple of areas where we can already see huge change. The most obvious is electrification and the broader sustainability and decarbonisation benefits that brings, but there’s also the growth in autonomous vehicles and the better use of data.
Firstly, an autonomous vehicle future might be closer than we think. About a year ago, at Custom Fleet’s parent company Element, we went through a large strategy exercise on the future of autonomous vehicles. Our initial reaction to their rise was they were something to think about in our future but fast forward 12 months, we realise it’s a technology that’s already on our doorstep.
We’ve done a lot of work with leading autonomous vehicle providers and what we’re seeing is this technology is coming along at a much more rapid pace.
A case in point is one of the leading autonomous vehicle providers in the US market, which already operates in multiple cities and is looking to expand. They’re the clear robotaxi leader in the US where recent industry reports suggest there are around 1500 autonomous vehicles operating with another 2000 in China.
These numbers are set to surge with global banking leviathan, according to recent industry reports, in July this year around 35,000 autonomous vehicles might be on the road in the US by 2030.
At Custom Fleet, we agree autonomy is actually coming at a much more rapid pace and that will influence our attitudes about driving and vehicle ownership which we’re already starting to see.
Besides electrification and the growth of autonomous vehicles, the other big issue leading us to a more sustainable transport future is the use of data.
Data allows us to monitor how a vehicle is used and assists us in better understanding how a vehicle can be utilised more productively and sustainably.
For example, we did a consulting exercise with a large customer on what was predominantly a sales fleet recently. Looking at the data we found the day of the week their fleet was used the most was Saturday. The hours of the day during the week that the vehicles were used the most were 8:00 till 9:00 in the morning and 5:00 till 6:00 in the afternoon.
We found in some cases, fleet utilisation data reveals vehicles are underused for core business activities, which means alternative mobility solutions may be more effective than traditional fleets.
Bearing this in mind, the most sustainable solution here may not be electrification, it may in fact be vehicle rationalisation and running a smaller fleet. In fact, the most sustainable could just be smarter mobility services which is something Custom Fleet is building as we move beyond traditional fleet management.
There will always be vehicles in the system, but in the future customers will look for measured movement instead of large fleets. For Custom Fleet this means we need to build services and products for the future that are more mobility focused. A more service-oriented organisation providing measured movement transportation.
There is no shortage of issues around the path to a sustainable transport future, and we need to work collectively to solve common problems so we can move forward together to drive meaningful change.
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