Mobility and Covid-19: what’s the C.A.S.E. now?

On 30 March 202030 March 2020 By Carlo IacoviniIn autonomous driving, Electric vehicles and Charging infrastructures, english blog, Sharing mobility and beyondLeave a comment

CASE (as ACES and similars) is the acronym reflecting the most recent trends in the Mobility Industry: we keep hearing that “Automotive is changing towards Connectivity, Autonomy, Sharing, Electric”. Now that Covid-19

outbreak is locking down entire countries, economies, the industry is thinking about what the future will look like.

The impacts of the crisis are far beyond what we think and the first main problem will be how to keep global corporations financially stable while production is closed.. and demand will not turn on with a click after the crisis will be over. In the short term, Governments and Bank institutions will provide large cash to companies to keep employees and restart production. In the meantime, management will evaluate multiple scenarios. and new trends will need to be considered.

Electric technology transition. There is a large debate about the correlation between Covid-19 outbreak and pollution, giving evidence on how much emissions fell due to lockdown and how the virus spreads out the most in critical pollutant regions (particularly in the north of Italy). These links should

support investing in EV to reduce global emissions from transport. Transition to electric can’t be stopped easily after more than a decade of r&d and product planning but as the market is still policy-driven more than consumer-driven, the fall of general demand could significantly slow down the process. The economic crisis will stop new sales (in china dropped more than 80%) and a delay in the mass adoption of EV might become a consequence to consider. Automakers will leverage these conditions to slow down the process and push for technological neutrality approach to increase sales and fight pollution in parallel through CNG/LPG and Euro 6 available products. The entire industry has already asked to EU regulatory body to postpone penalties for not reaching EU target goals in reducing total emissions while some top management is already sharing to the market some strategic decision (like JLR owner TATA willing to find a partner for the automotive division).

Autonomy: this much-expected revolution will need to change priorities and main business models. From one side teleoperations and self-driving vehicles shall be widely adopted for specific applications like driving in restricted areas, disinfection of roads, small goods delivery. On the other hand, some of the disruptive global services like robotaxis might become less attractive to consumers

affected by social distance and share mobility restrictions. Autonomous mobility software industry should not be directly affected by the outbreak, it’s more about which segment will continue to be on top of the list.

Sharing mobility. The disruptive trend of sharing mobility faces the biggest threats. Social distance will become a very common word and even more a requirement for the next 12/18 months to avoid the outbreak’s peaks. Consequently.. how many of existing users will still be comfortable in ride sharing, car pooling or sharing a vehicle with others.. seating in less than 1-meter distance? Covid-19 is changing our culture and personal values. Health care and prevention will become THE priority and customers will behave accordingly.
Rental and car share businesses might mitigate future new concerns through special tools to give confidence about how vehicles will be cleaned and disinfected after each ride. We already see leading players like Getaround facing financial problems in US while looking for a buyer or on the contrary leading EU player in sharing mobility Wunder, investing to acquire rental business software.

Connectivity: Not real negative impacts around connectivity. The communication infrastructure needed for the car and global infotaintment system to enhance the riding experience will remain a key feature of every vehicle doesn’t matter which segment and target user will be built for.

The timeline for those changes will also vary geographically even if automotive is a global industry (especially for components and supply chain). Europe risks the most due to stagnant demand with large production to keep alive but at least will go over Covid earlier than USA (that has just begun), while China is already in the re-opening phase and everybody hopes will boost the market raising demand. The global situation is still very fluid and the coming weeks will be crucial to understand what case will be next.

Mircomobility can be a different story from sharing

On 22 August 201922 August 2019 By Carlo IacoviniIn Electric vehicles and Charging infrastructures, english blog, Sharing mobility and beyondLeave a comment

Car sharing: pioneer business.

Nearly 20 years ago we were few dozens of people (entrepreneurs, managers, engineers and environmental advocates) around Europe keen to the idea of sharing cars. Early stage projects, often public funded, came live trying to demonstrate that sharing mobility was the right choice to fight congestions, pollution in the cities. Opponents (car industry-first) had an easy time to even make fun of car sharing because the car ownership culture was so strong that nobody would have bet on sharing mobility success. Furthermore, car sharing was not regulated and public authorities struggled to define a public or private service. Fortunately, not many lobbies could fight since the numbers were very low. But business rules sometimes are unexpected and when big players started heavily investing in the service since it was a captive market.. it magically became trendy and blew up with still ongoing growth. Europe drove this growth and expanded in the US and Asia (leading one now).

The ride-hailing revolution.

Ten years later we saw an opposite trend, based on ride-hailing services. Thanks to big cheques and VC willing to address the mobility market we saw the incredible growth of the on-demand ride-hailing business (from Uber on). US market was quite low regulated and after setting a general regulatory framework to recognize the TNC (Transport Network Company) the business boomed. Unfortunately, the reverse trip didn’t work in Europe. where opponents this time where much more seasoned and conservatives. taxi drivers lobby from one side and public transport operators on the other side. Both lobbies were very closed to national and local governments.. and they succeed in limiting (or banning) ride-hailing services in many cities or country.

Micromobility: the last missing point

Now the new trend is getting live.. micro-mobility, based on kick scooters or scooter sharing. Again we face similar situations to the past but regulators and operators are more ready to manage operations and services. We don’t have lobbies to fight against to.. (maybe the “pedestrians lobby could be the most interested one.. but they are not officially organized 😄) and the services boomed in the US first but nearly at the same time in Europe. However, cities opened their roads and sidewalks (and cycling lanes and pedestrian zones) to kickscooters we can say that the main factors that can destroy or heavily limit the business in Europe are safety and public order. kickscooter provides an unbeatable feeling of freedom to move everywhere (from home to metro to your car).. but freedom can get too much closer to anarchy in this case. So we see cities

shutting down services, (Paris), banning operators until the local regulatory framework is all set (Milan), while studies declare numbers supporting how kick scooters are polluting and dangerous.

We don’t have fighters this time.. kickscooters sharing don’t steel job to any existing category but Governments (especially in Europe) are very keen to control and regulate mobility in every detail, therefore, a harmonized policy framework is highly recommended to gather operators and policymakers to a common standard and business case. We can learn from the past 20 years how to introduce and steer a mobility “revolution” in the right way, this time.

Lead the coming global mobility business (..part 2)

On 6 December 2017 By Carlo IacoviniIn Electric vehicles and Charging infrastructures, Sharing mobility and beyond, smart & green city1 Comment

Assets management and revenue streams

I addressed in my previous post some of the relevant key topics to lead future mobility business cases. I move forward now to analyse which are the assets and the revenue streams of this new business model

Managing fleet of autonomous vehicles offers the unique opportunity to use a series of assets to increase the value of the business and develop multiple collateral business cases linked with the operations.

Each asset can be owned/acquired/leased/ to run the business case and create more revenues streams

Real estate.

AREXPO_BIRD EYE VIEW DAY_3 — Area Expo MasterPlan – Courtesy CRA

Storage and parking. Having access to storage hubs and parking infrastructures will be a key factors when we’ll have thousands of vehicles running.

Garages for car services. Traditional car dealers and services will shift their core business from privates or direct customers to fleet and an efficient and fast organisation will optimise the operations

Charging hubs (Renewable powered, smart grid, vehicle2grid applications). Grid balance in cities will be an issue and those players with direct access to infrastructures will be facilitated. Energy will be the new “oil” and its availability can be improved thanks to renewable power.

Big data

autono Among world top ten brands as per capitalisation (Amazon, Apple, Google,) and in mobility also (Uber) there are companies owning huge amount of data. Big data will be a mainstream revenue stream for those able to monetise and create value from that. Transport and mobility provide a relevant amount, coming from the following areas:

Mobility patterns (Matrix o/d)
Mapping data (for autonomous driving software applications)
Driving data (travel behaviour, drivers behaviour in different environment, incentives for drivers, privacy policies)
Fleet data/Insurance
Artificial intelligence for mobility and user experience

Fleet

MOIA_Vehicle_Exterieur_02 — MOIA ridesharing bus

Cars are not only the main asset for running the operations as there are multiple options to get value from the vehicle:

Financial asset. Financing the fleet allows to have interest gain
Second life Battery pack strategies (link to storage business model). The batteries of the vehicles can shift into a second life plan to re-market them at the end of the first lifecycle for storage and other utilisations.
Marketing. On purpose vehicles are a branding tool (as Moia just proved with their launch few days ago)
Commercial (promotion and re-marketing). Vehicles can generate more revenue once we move them into the re-marketing plan and second sales.

Entertainment

What shall we do during our trips in autonomous cars? Many operators are raising this questions and pay per use services (entertainment/business) to be developed for self driving cars seems to be a collateral area of interest. Whether we use our subscriptions (Netflix, Spotify and similar), I bet many services will be integrated directly in the cars.

If those are some of the assets to be leveraged in future mobility business, there is an complementary strategy to address which seems to be the big umbrella where including the whole stack of innovation: MAAS: mobility as a service. Once the volume of ridesharing trips will really shift our cities mobility patterns we have to expect that large corporations will aggregate vertical players to create the biggest

shared-mobility-simulations-auckland — ITF Forum ride sharing simulation study

platform to really go from A to B with one touch. Many are competing already around the world and capitalisations will drive the winning ones.

East regions (China, Malaysia, India) faces deregulated market where new mobility services (ride sharing/ride hailing) have established brands like DIDI (China) Grab (Malaysia) Careem (Middle east) OLA (india). Many of them have international growth plans or even to extend operations (Didi just announced 151M$ investment to enter the car sharing market).

West regions (USA/Canada). is the cradle of new mobility and player are competing at the forefront of innovation thanks to most famous brands Uber/Lyft, Waymo/Apple.

Europe: is an highly regulated market and new mobility struggles to become real in terms of volumes. Further than direct business development a potential strategy to fast the process in the early stage is to link with public transport operators or car manufacturers that are familiar with regulations and they are entering in the mobility arena. Business development is subject to local/national Government approval even if EU policies are expected within few years time to create the legal framework.

So there’s a lot to do and we can be sure that mobility, public transport industry and automotive will converge in a whole new competitive arena that we don’t know the boundaries yet.

Mobilità a guida autonoma: un’industria in movimento

On 26 May 201726 May 2017 By Carlo IacoviniIn Electric vehicles and Charging infrastructures, Sharing mobility and beyondLeave a comment

Il processo di cambiamento in atto nel settore dell’automotive è così radicale che non tutti i grandi gruppi ne hanno piena consapevolezza. Da un lato nuovi player spingono per introdurre l’innovazione, cercando di dimostrare l’economicità e la profittabilità delle tecnologie, dall’altro anche i brand più tradizionalisti hanno avviato fasi di scouting tecnologico e indagini conoscitive. Tesla è sempre in prima linea tra i nuovi brand sulla scia dei successi di vendita della Model S/X e in preparazione dell’arrivo della Model3, primo modello più economico. L’azienda è al centro anche di speculazioni considerando che ha appena raccolto 1miliardo di $ e il gigante tecnologico Tencent ha rilevato il 5% del capitale di Tesla per 2,8mld di$. Un dinamismo di mercato che alimenta congetture sul fabbisogno di cassa dell’azienda in previsione del lancio di produzione della nuova media e la capacità di soddisfare la domanda di acquisto degli oltre 400.000 clienti che l’avevano prenotata. Il rischio è infatti di trovarsi a “metà del guado” con cassa limitata.. sarebbe la posizione più rischiosa per un’acquisizione (favorevole.. od ostile). A parte Tesla l’industria dei nuovi brand della Silicon Valley interamente votati a rivoluzionare la mobilità con veicoli connessi, autonomi e condivisi, fa i conti con la dura realtà. Faraday Future la più chiacchierata azienda americana (con capitali asiatici) è in grande difficoltà e dopo un lancio del loro primo veicolo (la FF91) in grande stile a Gennaio scorso a Las Vegas ha visto una drastica riduzione degli investimenti sulla fabbrica del Nevada (avviata per una piccola porzione rispetto ai piani generali), al quartier generale in California (venduto l’intero lotto di terra dove doveva sorgere una cittadella dell’innovazione), la dipartita di diversi executive da poco assunti (e l’ingresso di altri, come il nuovo CFO) e nessuna certezza sui tempi di produzione e commercializzazione del veicolo (che per la cronaca ha un prezzo stimato in quasi 170mila $). Next EV, altra multinazionale di pochi anni, dopo aver anticipato una vettura supersportiva da corsa con record sul giro realizzato al Nürburgring ha presentato EVE, il concetto per la nuova mobilità. Un veicolo che rappresenta un’emanazione diretta del proprio spazio di vita, come fosse un salotto o un ambiente dove le 4 ruote sono una componente quasi secondaria. Suggestioni.. certo, ma nemmeno troppo lontane nel tempo visto che anche Volkswagen a Ginevra ha presentato Sedric, un veicolo multifunzionale basato sulle stesse premesse concettuali. E per capire quanto le aziende guardino lontano basti pensare ad Airbus che insieme a Italdesign ha portato un prototipo di auto volante proprio nel salone svizzero…. leggi oltre

Articolo completo pubblicato su “Qualenergia” Aprile-Maggio 2017

Car sharing, parliamo di business

On 5 February 2016 By Carlo IacoviniIn Sharing mobility and beyond

Una chiacchierata con Gianluca Baldini su “Il Venerdì” di Repubblica

Qualche settimana fa ho fatto un’intervista con Gianluca, parlando di car sharing, nuovi business e criticità. Se ne parla oggi sul Venerdì, ma siccome la “carta stampata” ha sempre limiti di spazio e non è possibile raccontare tutto quello che viene discusso.. ripropongo l’intervista completa.

Venerdì_carsharing.jpeg

G. Come accennavi al telefono, dopo una iniziale euforia, il car sharing si deve scontrare con i numeri del business. analizzando i dati delle maggiori realtà di car sharing in Italia, sono tutti negativi. Come mai? Cosa manca al car sharing italiano per decollare?
C. Il car sharing è un business ad alta complessità e bassa marginalità. E’ nato in Italia attraverso finanziamenti pubblici con progetti piccoli, locali e in perdita. Milano rappresenta “l’eldorado” della sharing mobility ma dopo il grande entusiasmo si iniziano a fare i conti con la realtà. I fattori di successo del car sharing sono legati ai volumi (clienti e noleggi) e al risparmio sui costi di gestione, (qui la tecnologia aiuta molto). Sono poche le città che hanno densità di popolazione e predisposizione spinta all’innovazione tali da ripagare gli investimenti del gestore e ancor più i lunghi tempi necessari prima di arrivare a break-even. Non penso che il car sharing debba decollare perchè non ci sono le premesse strutturali. Può e dovrà evolvere integrando altri modelli di business che includeranno altri target creando un circolo virtuoso.

G. Per questo le società di car sharing in Italia stanno cambiando il loro modello di business (Enjoy che fa pagare dopo il 15esimo minuto di prenotazione, car2go facendo pagare di più se lontani dal centro, senza contare il fallimento di Twist)?
C. Le società in Italia dopo le prime sperimentazioni stanno cercando di adattare le strategie commerciali ai business plan. Lunghe attese gratuite prima di far partire i noleggi sono troppo onerose per il gestore mentre la ridistribuzione della flotta è una voce talmente alta nella gestione del business che conviene rischiare di perdere dei noleggi o dei clienti piuttosto che non dover spostare tutte le sera decine di auto dalla periferia al centro di Milano.
Twist ha chiuso le attività nonostante avessero cercato un posizionamento strategico a Milano, ma evidentemente lo sbilanciamento è stato troppo elevato.

G. Il car sharing in Italia così come lo conosciamo è destinato a finire?
C. No, non è destinato a finire ma integrarsi con altre formule. Per Daimler, Car2go è parte della piattaforma Moovel (che comprende molte altre applicazioni sui taxi, trasporti pubblici e non solo), Enjoy ha tentato la diversificazione sullo scooter sharing, mentre si stanno affacciando sul mercato aziende che puntano al carsharing peer to peer (utilizzo di auto tra privati) e servizi di ridesharing (come UBER grande nemico dei taxisti).

G. Cosa serve per rendere sostenibile un’azienda che offre servizi di car sharing?
C. Il car sharing può sostenersi quando dietro ci sono grandi capitali o grandi gruppi industriali, spesso con molteplici finalità che attutiscono eventuali segni negativi della gestione caratteristica. Non è un caso che le esperienze internazionali portino sempre a fusioni o acquisizioni.

G. Qual è il paragone con altri Paesi europei?
C. Il panorama è molto vasto, ma gli scenari sempre simili: In Germania uno dei principali gestori sono le FerrovieNazionali. In Francia il gruppo Bollorè ha la più importante quota di mercato con espansioni in America (Indianapolis) Italia (Torino e Roma) e future previsioni in Asia. Sempre basato sul modello tradizionale (rientro dell’auto nella stessa postazione). Players più piccoli sono destinati nel tempo a rientrare in galassie meglio organizzate.
Alcuni gruppi internazionali (Zipcar, leader in America e quotato è stato acquistato qualche anno fa da AVISBudget e puntano a un lento sviluppo in EU, oggi presenti in UK e Austria. Le case automobilistiche invece sono pesantemente entrate nel settore. Perchè intravedono una visione di mercato nuova e complementare.
Negli stati uniti c’è più sperimentazione: flightcar.com è un car sharing che ti permette di usare auto di privati che sono in viaggio e lasciano la vettura a gestore in Aeroporto durante la loro assenza.. Personalmente lo uso in ogni viaggio in California ed è assolutamente conveniente. A Los Angeles pochi giorni fa è stato presentato un nuovo car sharing, basato sulla brandizzazione e utilizzo della pubblicità sui veicoli waivecar Prima sperimentazione realistica di un diverso business case. Senza dimenticare la rincorsa di Ford/Bmw e GM che stanno annunciando investimenti milionari e nuove business unit dedite a sperimentare e costruire nuovi modelli e servizi.

Carsharing, in Italia il business è in movimento

On 27 October 201527 October 2015 By Carlo IacoviniIn Sharing mobility and beyond

di Carlo Iacovini

La mobilità condivisa ha una rapidità di crescita tale che è auspicabile delineare un aggiornamento del racconto sul “car sharing il business che si muove”. Se guardiamo all’Italia il quadro è di un vero “boom” anche se va contestualizzato geograficamente. Qui (pdf) sono pubblicati alcuni dati di sintesi presentati al recente salone internazionale dell’Automobile di Francoforte, che quest’anno aveva un intero padiglione dedicato al “New Mobility World”, un concentrato di best practices e operatori dell’innovazione provenienti da tutto il mondo.

Dodici città attivamente coinvolte nei servizi, 18 operatori diversi, una flotta di 6.000 veicoli complessivamente e 500.000 utenti di “sharing mobility” rappresentano numeri di assoluto valore, specialmente se confrontati con quanto è stato realizzato nel precedente decennio. Ma la situazione non è uguale in tutte le città. Se escludiamo le piccole realtà che oggi hanno solo il car sharing tradizionale, cosiddetto “station based”, cioè con parcheggi vincolati, il vero confronto italiano si concentra sui 4 capoluoghi che possono vantare una diversificazione di offerta. Milano, Firenze, Roma e Torino rappresentano il vero mercato della nuova mobilità in Italia.

Qui ogni storia è a sé. Roma vanta servizi diversificati con flotte importanti di Car2go ed Enjoy e proprio in questi giorni ha aperto al car sharing elettrico e allo scooter sharing. Un po’ all’inseguimento del primato di Milano ma è anche vero che l’Amministrazione capitolina ha avuto rilevanti priorità a cui dedicarsi nell’ultimo periodo.

Torino sembra essere una buona piazza per i gestori di free floating nonostante i misteriosi atti vandalici che hanno colpito Car2go nelle ultime settimane. Milanorappresenta l’80% del mercato di sharing mobility italiano, con 350.000 clienti, oltre 2400 auto, 40.000 utenti di bikesharing e 36.000 associati al più recente Scooter sharing. Nulla da aggiungere, i numeri parlano chiaro: Milano attraversa un momento di prosperità e modernità che la rendono sempre più appetibile e vivibile.

Realtà più piccole come Firenze probabilmente faticano a trovare una dimensione di fruibilità. Al di là di fattori di “moda” le dimensioni urbane più contenute e una densità abitativa inferiore alle metropoli rendono i servizi free floating (così come quelli tradizionali) al limite della sostenibilità.

Numeri a parte le principali innovazioni introdotte in Italia hanno due linee guida:nuovi operatori e nuove forme di sharing. L’arrivo di un nuovo player commerciale sta scompigliando un po’ le carte in tavola degli operatori. Sharengo è partita a Milano con le prime 150 auto interamente elettriche ma sta rapidamente conquistando molte altre piazze italiane.

L’idea di carsharing elettrico è la più gradita proposta che amministrazioni locali possano accettare perché abbatte anche le uniche critiche che in passato sono state rivolte ai car sharing endotermici. Condivisibile quindi che in pochi mesi siano stati pubblicati bandi di car sharing elettrico a Firenze, Roma e Torino e, probabilmente, presto anche in altre città. L’unico limite oggi potrebbe essere rappresentato dal veicolo in sé, che in quanto omologato come quadriciclo si presenta con un appeal molto diverso rispetto alle più “glamour” Smart e 500.

Il car sharing elettrico ha costi di avvio e di “operations” molto più alti del sistema tradizionale, sia perché le auto hanno costi di acquisto maggiori (non certo le cinesi), sia perché la gestione è molto più onerosa. In assenza di sistemi integrati di ricarica l’operatore deve spesso portare le auto in ricarica. Ma i cittadini (e i giovani in particolare) ci hanno abituato a grande entusiasmo sulle novità e ci si augura che anche il car sharing elettrico possa rappresentare la prossima evoluzione.

Restano per ora esclusi i grandi player, almeno in Italia. Car2go lancia una flotta di 500 Smart Elettriche, ma a Madrid, Europcar (socio di Car2go) sempre in Spagna, a Malaga, ha appena lanciato un servizio fully electric su base Nissan in collaborazione con Enel/Endesa, mentre le uniche 500 EV in circolazione in Italia sono in gestione a carcityclub, operatore di Torino (aderente al circuito ICS Car sharing).Il free floating elettrico ha costi di gestione molto elevati; complessità organizzative significative specie in base all’autonomia dei veicoli in circolazione oggi che non superano di molto i 100/130 km, obbligando i gestori a portarli fuori flotta, in ricarica molto spesso, penalizzando la redditività. Almeno fino a quando non avremo reti di ricarica tastcharge largamente diffuse in città, tali da permettere un aumento dell’utilizzo.Una seconda recente innovazione deriva dall’introduzione delle due ruote. Non le biciclette, il bike sharing è già ampiamente diffuso ma non ha rievanza di business e di marginalità economica, ma gli scooter. Anche qui dopo il primo test di Milano l’interesse cresce rapidamente. 36.000 sono gli iscritti a Enjoy a 2 ruote (anzi 3 ruote considerato l’uso del Piaggio MP3), mentre nuovi bandi sono già stati annunciati da altre città, a partire da Roma. Nuovamente troviamo players internazionali spagnoli e tedeschi pronti a scendere in campo anche se il servizio su due ruote è ancor più rischioso. La partita è sempre più aperta.

Carlo Iacovini è autore di “Car sharing – Come la sharing economy cambia la nostra mobilità”, Edizioni Ambiente, giugno 2014

Articolo originale pubblicato su Qualenergia.it

New Mobility World at IAA-Frankfurt. Mobility goes mainstream and E-mobility follows

On 17 September 201527 October 2015 By Carlo IacoviniIn Electric vehicles and Charging infrastructures, Sharing mobility and beyond

By Carlo Iacovini

It’s always nice visiting the IAA in Frankfurt, where the Automotive industry showcases its power and vision. Car manufactures invest millions in huge booths, actually entire buildings to prove the market is well alive and strongly committed in new product and services.

But among many common expectations this year an innovation came to the mainstream framework. An entire pavilion focuses on New Mobility, integrating connected cars, e-mobility, sharing economy and start ups. A complete mix that brought the attention of main players of these markets too facing new business models and users experiences. Some brands comes directly from automotive like Daimler group showcasing Car2go, Mytaxi and Moovel platform (the overall offer in new mobility). Or more recent starts up like BlaBlaCar that just announced 200 mln € new investment to scale the business globally. Institutions participated, G7 Minister of transports meeting took place with top level participations on future political and industrial trends. Italian Minister of Transport visited the event and in its official agenda he stopped by the Spin8 Italian start up just launched to the market to deploy a clever network of charging infrastructures for electric vehicles. Good signal that market is growing and interest from investors and institutions is increasing. After decades of pilots projects, finally New Mobility is coming to mainstream market, both from services and new business model. Let’s move on.

Fiat and Getaround partners to shape car’s sales

On 21 December 201427 October 2015 By Carlo IacoviniIn smart & green cityLeave a comment

by Carlo Iacovini

As car sharing is re-shaping mobility market car manufacturers have very different approaches to this business. Daimler group takes mobility as part of their own business. Since few years ago Daimler mobility services gmbh is a full operating company within the group and it develops a wide spectrum of innovative services. Through the Moovel platform the group goes much further than cars sales, integrating services and booking for trains, bike sharing, local public transport and taxi. A long term vision is bringing the company to lead the industry. Other brand like BMW tested small-scale traditional car sharing (Drive now) making sometimes pilots to use electric vehicles (like Renault with twizy) or to pioneer corporate services. Most of the others prefer to push providing cars to make people drive them but not investing in running operations. FIAT started to look at carsharing since early stage of introduction in national market in Italy (early 2000). By that time car sharing was a valuable promotional strategy to sell small fleets to local operators. In the city of Turin (Fiat headquarter at that time) the company is formal shareholders of local operators running more than 100 cars fleet. When national oil company ENI decided recently to enter into the free floating car sharing market Fiat become main partner to strength the Italian flag against German brand Car2go. 500 is official Enjoy brand vehicle according to the long history the car has for Italians ‘60’ 70 generations.

But how is the company embracing innovative business models targeting private owners to share their car to reduce total umber of vehicles? “If you can’t fight your enemy… it’s better to become friends”. The

partnership recently introduced by Getaround peer to peer car sharing operator and FIAT seems to go in this direction. According to official website Fiat offers a discount in car purchasing if customers share it with Getaround platform. User can earn up to $10.000+ per year and gets for free the “Getaround connect” device (priced 100$). Getaround doesn’t manage its own cars and the partnership is a valuable strategy to build a styling and glamour fleet that would make more attractive the service to new customers too. Car manufacturers thank you too.

Sharing mobility is game changer, again!

On 21 November 201427 October 2015 By Carlo IacoviniIn english blog, smart & green cityLeave a comment

$24M round B financing to US based peer-to-peer car sharing start up Getaround

By Carlo Iacovini

Since the last few years car sharing is changing personal and corporate mobility. Early start ups opened the market to rental models by hours and proved to became concrete businesses. Zipcar is a brand of AvisBudget group and keeps expanding operations in US and Europe. Local and national traditional car sharing operators grew in small scale models or become part of bigger networks. Especially in Europe we still see companies operating in city areas or nation based, not always being profitable with public funds. The most relevant innovation came by the free floating scheme. In Italy car2go and national oil company ENI owned ENJOY played a complete revolution in major cities like Milan, Rome and Florence, with more than 100.000 customers and for instance in Rome 15.000 rentals weekly. Free floating car sharing is easy to access and technology makes it appreciated by customers who also like glamour cars (Fiat 500 and Smart). While Autolib in France is the winning scheme proving that electric one way car sharing can impact on urban mobility with relevant Co2 emission reductions northern Europe markets still keep traditional schemes. In my recent published book (“Car Sharing il Business si muove” Edizione Ambiente) I describe different international experiences and business case but the market is rapidly changing again.

From US a new wave of innovation is facing the car sharing market, pioneering disruptive business models that combine high technology with unexpected individual behavior. Technology is the key driver of new application as new appls make simple sharing and operating services

Two different premises determined new businesses based on the concept of sharing personnel car:

Sharing private car as a driver
Sharing private car

UBER or Lyft represent best examples of the first approach, even if with different positioning. Uber is giant google funded key player to mobility services with a discussed overestimated financial evaluation that brings the company to be bigger than Facebook operating worldwide but with recent accuses of inappropriate strategies, against competitors, privacy policies violation for customers or even journalists. Law is also an issue as in almost every country transportation has specific rules and taxi regulations and private services need to operate in a new legal framework, still to be defined. Uber plan surely doesn’t focus only on the existing services and the goal of the company is to reshape overall mobility system in cities around the world. There might be the chance they will make it.

Looking at the future there are few new players facing the market with high potentialsuccess based on point 2. Relayrides and Getaround are 2 recent start ups

focusing on the opportunity for private people to share individual car to other members. For those who area familiar with sharing economy, it’s like AIRBNB for cars. While Relay rides targets daily (or longer) rental, Getaround seems to have found what in Italy we call “l’uovo di Colombo” (“Columbus egg” means something very clever). The GetaroundConnect is a device installed in the car allowing to open and to end the rental process with you phone. The keyless entry to vehicles makes easy to access even a private car because it solves the most inconvenient practical procedure (meeting to the owners and exchange the keys). This innovation increases numbers of vehicle available for customers, so the business itself. After few years testing in some cities Getaround just raised $24M round B funding from strategic partner Cox Automotive, to grow in US cities and improve operations. Considering number of vehicles parked on the streets for 80% of the day in bigger cities we bet that getaround is highly potential large scale business, not only in US but in Europe too specially where motorization index are insane (as in Italy).