NAFA Foundation Knocks It Out of the Park with Latest White Paper

Those of you who know me, know I am a big baseball fan. So, using a baseball metaphor, I am thrilled to announce that the NAFA Foundation, which earlier this year announced it was rebuilding itself from the inside out, last week hit a grand slam home run in its first at bat back in the big leagues.

The Foundation, formed in 1976 but relatively dormant the last few years, commissioned a study by international mobility expert Lukas Neckermann that outlined how fleet professionals should prepare for the mobility revolution. And, quite frankly, the study, titled The Mobility Revolution: A Primer for Fleet Managers, is outstanding.

Released last Thursday, and accompanied by a 60-minute webinar where Neckerman hit all the highlights of his work, the study focuses on emerging mobility trends and their impacts, including:

• What you should know about the four key pillars in the automotive sector: Connectivity, Automation, Sharing, and Electrification.
• The actors in a shared and autonomous value chain: Although OEMs are making sizable investments in startups in autonomous and shared mobility, they are also becoming only pieces of a much larger puzzle.
• Envisioning a new world in the near future where thousands of vehicles roam the streets that are autonomous, electric, and shared.
• The “last mile” in logistics is changing, with new distribution chains emerging.

What is clear from the study is that fleet managers are well-positioned to play a significant role in the mobility revolution, but not without lots of change and adaptation to the new environment. The Mobility Revolution: A Primer for Fleet Managers – the title of the whitepaper – provides a clear roadmap of steps for you to take and questions to ask to begin your journey of reimagining yourself as the mobility leader for your employer.

Here are some of the points in the study that stood out to me:

• According to Steven Choi, Autonomy Product Lead at Uber: “In the next 5-10 years, the trucking industry will see the greatest disruption from autonomous systems. It will be about 50:50, autonomous and human-driven vehicles on the highway, so, on a trip from NY to LA, the truck will drive itself fully autonomously on the highways -- basically, from the outskirts of one city to another. When they get to the distribution center at the outskirts, a human driver will physically join the vehicle to take it into the city.”
• “Corporate carsharing has emerged as a replacement for pool cars in some countries. Examples include Fleetster, Zipcar, and Enterprise Car Share, which are popular among municipality-owned fleets and on college campuses. In some cases, cities and corporate fleets even choose to make shared vehicles available to the community or the public outside of working hours.”
• “A major driver of the change [to electric vehicles] will be simple economics: the total cost-of-ownership (TCO) of electric vehicles in some cases already is superior to gasoline or diesel vehicles; where it’s not, it will be within the coming years…As lithium-ion prices drop by 15-20% year-on-year, the price-per-mile of range for electric vehicles decreases, virtually proportionately.”
• “The current model – where each individual owns (or leases) a car and uses it for primary transport, is beginning to fade. Younger generations across the globe are choosing to live in cities rather than suburbs or small towns, which implies greater habitation densities. Car ownership is much less important to young consumers than previous generations as they choose to take shared rides, mobility services, transit services, ride a bike, or walk to their destination, over owning a car.”
• “In urban areas especially, we should expect to see shared, autonomous transport solutions become established quickly, especially in controlled and defined environments – such as airports, parking lots, shopping centers, and university or company campuses.”
• Tony Candeloro, Senior Vice President, Technology and Operations at Holman Strategic Ventures (owners of ARI Fleet Management), said, “In five years, we will see fewer owned vehicles, and more shared vehicles. We will see fewer consumer miles driven, and more fleet miles driven. Additionally, autonomous technology will be clear enough so that fleet managers can plan their impact.”
• “Some business practices will need to evolve as fleets adopt new ideas and practices. Fleets will – over time – transition from owned and operated in-house vehicles, to shared, automated cars, vans, delivery trucks, and cargo-hauling heavy-duty vehicles.”
• “In the next decade, there will surely be a divergence of fleet management responsibilities. For cars, there will still be the classic role of vehicle procurement and distribution. The fleet manager for the autonomous trucks of tomorrow, however, will need to understand trucks, but will also need to be a logistics expert.”

For fleet managers, the time to take action is now, so that you can ward off becoming a victim of this change. I encourage you to download your free copy of The Mobility Revolution: A Primer for Fleet Managers and start putting it to work for you!

Get your free copy by clicking here.

Sincerely,

Phil

P.S. If, after reading The Mobility Revolution: A Primer for Fleet Managers, or watching the accompanying webinar, you decide you would like to see more white papers and webinars like this, please consider making a donation to the NAFA Foundation. Your donations are tax-deductible and can be made securely online at www.nafafoundation.org.