Business mobility specialist Alphabet has seen customer usage of its car sharing platform grow by 18.68% this year.

The growth in bookings, to the end of November 2017, meant that Alphabet's corporate, SME and public sector customers who use AlphaCity drove more than one million 'shared miles' on British roads.

Up to the end of November, AlphaCity vehicles had travelled 1,016,282 miles on UK roads as a result of 23,391 bookings by users (compared with 19,709 bookings for the same time last year).

This saw the average journey length for a shared vehicle fall to 43 miles, while each vehicle continues to average more than 30 employee users per vehicle.

Daniel St.Claire, car sharing and e-mobility manager at Alphabet, said: “With a range of low and zero emission BMW and Mini vehicles of various bodystyles now available with the car sharing technology, fleets of all sizes are looking at AlphaCity as a solution to their short term mobility needs.

"This year the average CO2 output for the entire AlphaCity fleet is just over 100g/km and with the increase in take-up of electric and hybrid vehicles the expectation is that this will decrease further.

"This year we’ve also added the new BMW 5 Series and Mini Countryman PHEV to the AlphaCity product line-up so there’s a vehicle to suit every business journey.”

Nick Butler, Alphabet’s Head of Mobility Services commented: “One of our first-ever AlphaCity customers is currently reporting 90% usage of their vehicles during working hours, which is a terrific achievement, particularly where utilisation of the vehicle fleet is a key measure of success for both for the organisation and for their employees.

"Shared mobility requires a mindset shift in the industry and with fleet decision-makers; it’s not about the sheer number of vehicles you have on fleet, it’s about how you use them to deliver more mobility with less vehicles.

"The key questions for successful shared mobility are around how often your vehicle assets are being employed, the number of people who can access them and ultimately the number of employee journeys which they are providing solutions for.

"Looking forward into 2018, we’re keen to continue our innovation in this area with the expansion of our AlphaCity technology into ‘multi-make’ vehicles and also Light Commercial Vehicles following a successful trial earlier this year.”

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