The car fleet market is at the verge of the revolution — 2020 at VivaDrive
Tags: Startup, Mobility, Poland, Cars, Transportation

The car fleet market is at the verge of the revolution — 2020 at VivaDrive Mat Follow Dec 23, 2020 · 5 min read

I assume that you have or had a car. There are some 312.7 million motor vehicles in circulation on the EU’s roads, that is more than one for every two Europeans, and at least 30% of them are owned by companies. Car is a very comfortable way of getting from point A to B, unless there are traffic jams. But it can also be a burden, when it breaks or when you need to pay for insurance or fuel. Moreover our world is changing and becomes more sustainable. So your transportation choices. You need to comply with these new rules — Zero Emission Zones in our cities, extra taxes for high emission vehicles or financial incentive to start using low emission transport.

Fleet manager

Imagine you need to deal with 100 or 500 cars. Imagine you are a car fleet manager. Big responsibility but also a lot work to manage so many vehicles. Traditional systems to manage your fleet are costly and frustrating. You can’t tell what are the exact costs, how to comply with new regulations, how to mange it efficiently so you loose a lot of money and energy.

Why you should care? The car fleet market is at the verge of the revolution. The EU forces private and public organisations to switch to safe and sustainable transport — eliminate road accidents, switch to electro mobility, mobility and shared transport.

Soon you will probably hear about “fleetification” — the evolution from individually owned vehicles to ones shared by various user based in Mobility as a Service (MaaS) schemes, and “mobilists”- people who simply want to get from point A to B and are not emotionally involved in cars. Autonomous cars are just around the corner. It’s a transportation/mobility paradigm shift, and world needs business solutions to faca these new challenges.

That is why we created VivaDrive, an AI-powered system that helps fleet managers control fleet costs, engage fleet drivers, simplify the workload and most importantly switch a fleet to electric vehicles or any other sustainable transportation choice that will save money in a long run. We created two tools:

EV Recommend that helps companies assess how to switch to electromobility and deploy electromobility in their organisations

that helps companies assess how to switch to electromobility and deploy electromobility in their organisations Digital Fleet that helps companies manage their car fleet consisting of Electric Cars but also traditional fuel vehicles. We help fleet managers reduce accidents, optimise TCO costs and turn their fleets green.

Why do I care?

I am an environmentalist — I want to make a positive difference to the earth. I do worry about what lies ahead for our planet. I also care that future generations will have to deal with the consequences of the choices that we are making today. I am also motivated by economic reasons, and I believe that we need a healthy environment so that the earth may continue to produce wealth for all of us.

I live in Warsaw, Poland. Great city to live in but also with a lot of transportation problems — huge traffic jams and polluted air.

The average Pole is responsible for 8,000 kilograms of CO2 a year. In order to absorb that much carbon dioxide, you need to plant three hectares of forest. Unfortunately it is mostly generated by transport. An average car emits 160 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre of driving. The harder you drive, brake, accelerate, the higher the emission.

Poland has one of the worst air pollution in the EU

At VivaDrive, we want to make a difference and help companies switch green but in a sustainable way. It needs to be an evolution and companies need to be able to afford it.

So how do we do that? We believe in #diversity and #collaboration. I had a privilege to work, in the past, for international corporates, within gender and culturally diverse teams. When I came back to Poland and started VivaDrive, I decided to apply this diversity in my company. We are not yet another IT startup, we try to attract people with different backgrounds (IT, automotive, ITS, UX/UI, marketing) and cultures (our team mates are from all across Europe and from Asia). Cool place to work at :)

Finally, partnerships. We are aware that on our own it’s impossible to make a big change. We need a support of bigger organisations.

2020 was a difficult year, for different reasons. We were about to hit the market with our new solutions in March 2020 and start selling to SMEs, but COVID-19 thwarted our plans. We had to adapt our strategy and decide to start working with organisations that will help us improve our product, strengthen our market positions and prepare for more prosperous time (hopefully 2021). We were lucky to:

work with Synerise (https://synerise.com/blog/future-of-electromobility-how-we-joined-vivadrive)

(https://synerise.com/blog/future-of-electromobility-how-we-joined-vivadrive) participate in acceleration program PilotMaker ElectroScaleUp (http://www.pilotmaker.pl/2020/09/14/konferencja-prasowa/)

(http://www.pilotmaker.pl/2020/09/14/konferencja-prasowa/) win MIT EF CEE acceleration program (https://mitefcee.org/today-5-amazing-technology-startups-selected-in-the-spring-edition-of-the-mit-enterprise-forum-cee-program-start-their-american-dream/),

acceleration program (https://mitefcee.org/today-5-amazing-technology-startups-selected-in-the-spring-edition-of-the-mit-enterprise-forum-cee-program-start-their-american-dream/), participate in Data Market Services accelerator for the best data driven scaleups, organised by The Next Web

accelerator for the best data driven scaleups, organised by The Next Web realise a large multimodal logistic project in the city of Częstochowa (south of Poland) together with Rafako E-Bus , PKP Group , Poczta Polska and Tauron (https://fb.watch/2yYmz1IT5J/)

, , and (https://fb.watch/2yYmz1IT5J/) prepare distribution collaboration in Poland and in Belgium, awaiting approval :)

If you want to be part of our e-mobility adventure, contact us! We are looking for team members, partners and customers, but also investors!

Happy and prosperous 2021!

Mat — CEO VivaDrive

on behalf of VivaDrive team.