The fleet industry has an important part to play in the future of transport by providing vehicles and managing them efficiently, according to Chris Kirby, co-founder and CEO of mobility start-up Tomorrow’s Journey.
“We believe that fleet will underpin the future of transport,” he told delegates at the recent virtual Fleet200 meeting. “There’s lots of talk about companies like Uber, Zipcar, and car sharing companies you need to be able to manage the assets, you need to be able to run them efficiently, you need to have a physical footprint - lots of things that fleets have. There is a real opportunity there.”
He suggested that businesses could support new mobility services by renting out under-utilised vehicles.
For example, one of Tomorrow’s Journey’s customers has a nationwide network of workshops supported by a fleet of Chapter 8 vehicles which are used when vehicles are being repaired. When the vehicles are not needed they are available to third parties, who can book the vehicles digitally and access them remotely.
However, he also acknowledged that the Covid-19 pandemic has caused uncertainty about car sharing, with some people more willing to loan their car to others because it isn’t being used as much and others concerned about sanitisation and preventing the spread of the virus.
He highlighted a community car share scheme, Karshare, which Tomorrow’s Journey has been working on, where private individuals have been making their personal cars available to NHS staff and other key workers during the lockdown.
“There was a willingness for people to share vehicles in that scenario,” he said.
> The above was shared with Fleet News at the July meeting of the Fleet200 Executive Club.
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Sarah Tooze is a former managing editor of sister title Smart Transport. Prior to joining Smart Transport she worked on Fleet News for more than 10 years, latterly as deputy editor, and won the ‘automotive business journalist’ award in the 2017 Newspress Awards.
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