ARVAL LAUNCHES SMART POOL CARS

Smart pool cars allows companies using traditional pool cars to equip them with the Arval car sharing solution in order to digitalise the entry to the pool vehicles thanks to the keyless technology, ease everyday management of their pool’s fleet, expand the use of a given fleet to more people and gain efficiency

Interview with Amélie PHELIP, Arval Mobility Director.

What are the recent trends and development of the car sharing market lately?

The inflation rate and macroeconomic problems are putting additional pressure on fleet owners.

The supply chain crisis is having a dual effect: The increase of vehicle prices is leading to higher costs as well as increasing delivery times, making it more difficult for full service leasing customers to access to new vehicles.

These macro-economic parameters push customers to look for solutions that both reduce their mobility costs and increase the utilization rate of their existing vehicles.

We can also see an increase in corporate fleet owners looking to adapt their fleets and push mobility solutions. Car Sharing and other mobility solutions (such as bike rental/sharing, mobility budgets, etc.) are progressively being seen as an important part of achieving corporates’ CSR objectives, and also cost reduction and employee benefit goals (especially in the increasingly challenging headhunting battle).

Nonetheless, Corporates are still struggling to take the plunge and implement these solutions.

Many reasons can explain this, one of them being the need to change habits within companies by implementing new mobility solutions.

How do you see these trends evolve in the coming months / year?

We see economic pressure continues to stay at high levels with continuous necessity to find solutions towards limiting fleets costs, improve efficiency without affecting employee’s satisfaction.
Clients will continue to ask their fleet partners to achieve those goals via levers such as data analysis, digitalization & automation. Also, clients will continue to need help/assistance regarding the electrification of their fleet.

Finally, the introduction of Tax-incentivize on Mobility allowance/budget is expected to push corporate interest for innovative mobility solutions such as car sharing.

What about Arval? How Car Sharing is doing at Arval? Are there some Countries / Market that are going faster or slower than others?
Arval is currently following a very clear roadmap based on the Arval Beyond strategic plan, designed to transform Arval according to major market trends, taking it from a full-service leasing company to a leader in all sustainable mobility solutions including the car.

Arval Car Sharing is part of this strategic plan, and our ambitions in is to encourage Arval’s customers to take the first step into a new era of digitalization, implementing innovative mobility solutions for all their employees.

After a test and learn period in pilot markets, Arval signed a strategic partnership in 2021 with Ridecell, a US company specializing in mobility technology. This international partnership was created in order to accelerate car sharing and, more generally, drive the digitalization and automation of fleets.

The Italian, Dutch, Belgian & French markets are currently the most mature.

What is your typical Arval Car Sharing client?

There are two types of Arval Car Sharing clients. Large & multinational corporates, and public authorities, municipalities, government organizations.

You’re launching a new service, based on car sharing, called “Smart Pool Cars”. Can you describe what is it?

We are offering our customers the opportunity to accelerate the transformation of their fleet. To begin with, we are proposing to our customers who currently use traditional pool cars to equip them with Arval Car Sharing technology and to test it during a satisfied or money back trial period of about 4 months.

They are currently facing many problems with these pool cars that Arval Car Sharing can solve: under-utilization of the vehicles, increased damage, user frustration, lack of control, use of taxis or short term rentals ...

At Arval, we strongly believe in the value this product can bring to our customers and we want to help them realize it by testing in real-life scenarios. Our confidence in this product is such that we are ready to reimburse our customers after 4 months if they feel that this product does not fully make their life easier, does not help them to improve the use of their vehicles and therefore reduce their TCO or improve the satisfaction of their employees.

What is its roll-out plan?

The scope of this campaign is Belgium, Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Spain and Switzerland.

What advantages can a client expect from using “Smart Pool Cars”?

A customer of Arval adopting Smart Pool Cars can expect:

• An option to digitalise the access to the pool vehicle using keyless technology (noticeably improving employee satisfaction and expanding the access to more employees)
• Improvements regarding the clarity in everyday management of the client’s fleet (damage control, managing users, booking etc… now all gathered on one single platform)
• Having the opportunity to diversify the mobility mix, allowing clients to have a more sustainable and innovative mix to offer to all their employees.
• An improvement in the efficiency and utilisation of pool vehicles, reducing the total cost of mobility and administrative burden.

With the Arval Car Sharing technology, companies can easily manage servicing & cleaning in cost-effective fashion, measure shared (pool) car usage, collect real-time information on (electric) shared vehicle trips and charge status, view emission reports, monitor irresponsible driving behavior, access real-time booking & vehicle allocation information and remove in-person key handovers and digital driver license recognition.

What do existing clients say about Arval Smart Pool Cars?

Without relying on any waiting period of new cars delivery, our Clients confirm how Arval Car Sharing is allowing them to immediately:

• reduce the total cost of mobility by 20on average,
• better allocate vehicles thanks to data usage,
• improve the user satisfaction via the app,
• be more efficient with less administrative workload and therefore more profitable.

For smaller fleets, clients especially mentioned the convenience aspects of the solution sparing them the hassle of booking, key-handovers but also a reduction of mobility business expenses such as taxi expenses.

Both say it helps them in tracking their CO₂ emissions and reducing the impact of their carbon footprint.

In conclusions, they can do more with less.

Is this the only service of this kind available on the market?

There are several software companies offering car sharing technology in the market. But there are very few services such as Arval Car Sharing that offer the technology but also all the traditional services one would expect from leasing companies.

This allows Arval to offer an end-to-end service from vehicle financing, insurance, maintenance, EV charging but also car cleaning on demand on top of all features offered by the Car Sharing Technologies.