Car sharing is growing in popularity and presents a unique opportunity for businesses of all sizes to access a fleet of cars on a user pays basis without the traditional administration of fleet management. Fleet Auto News has this exclusive interview with Paul Cummaudo, director at GreenShareCar.
Q. How popular is car sharing and why do people like it?
Car sharing is rapidly growing in popularity, but many people still aren’t quite sure what it is, how it works, and how it compares to other methods of transportation.
The first thing you need to know is that car sharing is a type of car rental. What makes it different from traditional car rental (Hertz, Avis, Budget etc) is that it is designed to be convenient for people who want to rent cars for short periods of times (a few hours) and only pay for their usage (you are billed based on how long you have a car and pay only for excess distance traveled, but in saying that, every trip includes 100km free fuel regardless of hours reserved).
Another difference with traditional car rental that makes car sharing more practical for people who don’t own a car is that it allows you to access a car at any hour, not just business hours. And because the cars are spread around inner cities currently Melbourne and Sydney in reserved parking bays, chances are there’s one such parking close to where you live, making it easy to walk to it.
The world is rapidly urbanizing and in the future most people will live in cities. At the same time, billions of people will want more personal mobility. If we do things right, our cities will be designed in ways that make them walkable and bikable, and fast and efficient public transportation will provide the majority of trips.
Car sharing can complement these means of transportation. It works better in densely populated areas (ie. cities), it works better for people who have other ways to get around most of the time (ie. for the daily commute), and it is less expensive than owning a car, especially in a city. It looks like the future is bright for car sharing!
Q. How many different types of vehicles do you have? What are they?
We have a variety of vehicles like the small Toyota Yaris, Hyundai Ascent and i30 hatchbacks and the hybrid Toyota Prius and Prius C.
The Toyota Hi Ace is very popular, even with people that own their own cars, as well as people movers like the Hyundai iMax eight seater and the Toyota Mini bus that seats 12 but can be driven with a standard drivers licence. We have also just introduced the Jeep Compass SUV’s.
Q. How long to you keep your cars for?
Generally three to four years. Some StrataFleet vehicles in property developments we can extend this to five years due to the very low kilometres travelled.
Q. Why are businesses interested in car sharing?
Businesses that are located in the CBD have a vast majority of staff that travel to work by public transport, or some now ride their bikes or walk. If during the day a scheduled meeting requires transportation then these employees can use a GreenShareCar vehicle.
Some of our clients include publicly listed companies with over 30 drivers on the account. They pay one account a month for time or kilometres used. There is no need to purchase cars, administer fuel cards or driver reimbursements. All company drivers accepted by us on the clients account are automatically covered for comprehensive insurance. There is no down time for cars being serviced, if a car is damaged we simply provide another car in that location until the repairs are complete.
Q. What percentage of bookings are business related?
60% are business and 40% private.
Q. What is the ratio between small, medium and large businesses using your organisation?
Its a pretty even spread. In the future all large corporations such as banks will switch to our ExclusiveFleet and QuickFleet. GreenShareCar is the first Australian car share operator with unique offerings for Corporate, Government and StrataFleet.
Universities such as The Australian National University have done their homework in the last few years and have already gone to tender to replace their some of their traditional fleet vehicles with car share vehicles that can also cater for all staff and students when these corporate vehicles would otherwise sit idle after hours and on weekends.
Q. What is the technology platform you use?
Our state-of-the-art car share technology is both innovative and sustainable, making sure that all our clients transport needs are well covered. GreenShareCar is the only Australian car share provider that provides an on board computer screen to every vehicle so our drivers are well informed about reservation starting times and end times, kilometres travelled and more.
In addition drivers can also extend their reservations using the on board computer or their mobile phones. Our hardware technology comes from proven car share providers in Europe and our software is via cloud with one of the world best car share software providers who provides services to a worldwide fleet with over 6,500 vehicles. In addition we have local in house infrastructure that runs our ExclusiveFleet and StrataFleet solutions.
Q. Is it available to other fleets for fleet management?
We have received many inquiries from a number of large fleet management organisations on how we can partner with them, so they can on sell our car share solutions to their clients.
The Australian corporate car share market has much more potential and is much bigger than the on-street model where there is uncertainty with councils on how they will administer future car share policies. Participating councils have either adopted a car share policy or are in the process of developing a policy to meet future demand for this service to their local communities. Some councils are getting it all wrong with the introduction of parking fees and set up costs, which are representing obstacles for future growth.
Q. What lessons have you learnt about managing a fleet of vehicles?
The need to have good systems in place to manage a huge amount of reservations, toll charges, fuel management, infringements and damage to vehicles just to name a few. These services have never been provided by traditional fleet management companies to date, so the future in fleet management is huge.
The winners will be those car share companies that can adapt to change and demonstrate capability to manage large corporate and Government fleets.
Q. What is the weirdest thing a customer has done to a car?
We had some members who were having a baby and used one of our car’s to get to the hospital, they had a lovely baby girl named Sarah.
Another time one of our employees was cleaning the car, they went back to the cleaning van to get something out and a person on the street hopped in the car and drove off! We immobilised the car and GPS tracked half way around the city! (Someone clearly didn’t want to take public transport that day!)
For more information visit the GreenShareCar website – www.greensharecar.com.au
