Cost Savings and Right-Sizing: How Car-Sharing Can Benefit Your Fleet

Cost-effectiveness is an ongoing challenge for fleet managers, who are responsible for maintaining a fleet with the right number and right kinds of vehicles. Meeting operational needs while controlling fleet size is a juggling act, and it can make cost control and vehicle utilization difficult. In a presentation at NAFA's 2019 Institute & Expo, Juan Gabarro of ZipCar and Jean Pilon-Bignell of Geotab discussed how data capture and telematics can help produce a car-sharing business model that helps managers walk the fine line between efficiency and utilization.

Pilon-Bignell stressed the need for high-definition data capture and analytics in understanding driver behavior and adapting to changes in the industry. An analytical understanding of your fleet, its operators, and assets provides an enhanced understanding of usage patterns over time, and by location in the aggregate, he said. Plus, it supplies quantifiable evidence that car sharing can help maximize fleet utilization.

“Car sharing gives you access to an expanded fleet during peak times, access to different types of vehicles according to need, centralized control over usage, and the ability to eliminate abuse by employees,” Pilon-Bignell said, adding that analysis is useful in identifying which vehicles can be electrified and in optimizing use of your transient seasonal fleet, thereby improving ROI.

Fleet-Sharing Benefits - Cost-effectiveness is the chief benefit of a fleet-sharing model, which makes possible the reduction of vehicles and the maintenance of an owned fleet for “business as usual” rather than peak times, Gabarro said. “You may even be able to eliminate locations as well as vehicles,” Gabarro. In some cases, fleet-sharing leads to substantial fleet reductions and cutbacks in the need for parking space. “Discarding part of your fleet can increase ROI and some organizations have saved tens of millions of dollars through fleet-sharing,” he said.

It also provides access to a larger, more diverse pool of vehicles and makes it easier to share across departments and locations. App-based operations centralize vehicle control and render keys obsolete. In some cases, drivers simply use an identification badge with a transponder to access vehicles. The expense of tracking keys and making new ones is eliminated. A fleet-sharing model may also offer:

• Access to metrics that help determine whether vehicles are delivering optimal performance
• Safety alerts aimed at maintaining vehicles and improving driver safety
• Longer vehicle life spans
• Real-time access to the status of your fleet
• Improved customer satisfaction
• Reduced labor costs through driver monitoring and accountability
• Real-time driver monitoring eliminates handwritten time reports; enhanced driver accountability reduces the likelihood of employee fraud