The use of e-commerce as a means of acquiring fleet vehicles is on the increase, but still erratic according to automotive IT company epyx. Head of business development Ken Trinder commented: “Orders through the platform are up by 50% on a year ago but still not reaching the pre-2008 level, when fleet sales really began to be affected by the recession. However, we do see an interesting effect which we believe is a reflection of the erratic economic recovery – we’ll have perhaps two busy days on the platform followed by a noticeably quiet one.

Fleets are certainly buying cars and vans in much higher numbers than during the last couple of years but are not automatically repeating orders in the same way they would have done before the recession. Instead, each order for a single vehicle or a batch is clearly being carefully considered.” He went on to say that he believes that the ease of access to a wide range of information is one of the reasons why e-ordering is proving to be increasingly popular.

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