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Fleet Europe Forum 2011 about Smart Mobility Management
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 Speaking about the growing move towards smarter ways of moving around in the future, Edward Gibbs of consultants Frost & Sullivan started by explaining that all the data indicated that the world was becoming more urbanised than ever. Whereas 50% of the world’s population lived in cities in 2007, this proportion was set to rise to 70% by 2050?
Edward Gibbs then showed the three types of conglomeration involved: mega cities, mega regions and corridors between these and linking them. He referred to one of the elements of smart mobility from the past century – building ring roads around cities to ease congestion, creating bus lanes, creating parking programmes, but said that the current trend was for cars to be designed around cities, rather than the other way around, as used to be the case.
A note of caution for the many car manufacturers in the audience came in the form of another statistic: over the past five years or so, new car registrations in the 18 to 25 year old age range had dropped by some 20% - and these are the next customers… Each car in a car sharing scheme could replace 2 to 3 private cars, he explained, and on top of this, competition for manufacturers was likely to come from outside the automotive industry, as the Y generation was looking for its ‘Facebook on wheels’!
Responding from a user’s point of view, Corrado Simontacchi of Huntsman said that the major need for business was to look at the way you provide services – and mobility is a service – to your employees. This therefore included travel, the fleet, IT… Traditional solutions may not necessarily be the best for your company now, he warned. But the company’s individual business was an important factor: Huntsman tends to have chemical plants located outside of urban areas, of course, and car-sharing may offer some solutions, for example, but not in every case. And also in his case, some 70% of the workforce is involved in production to some degree, so home-working is not an option. But Corrado Simontacchi was convinced that the ‘new way of working’ is most certainly coming along. He advised that the best way to judge any proposition in this domain is to look at the value it might bring to your business.
| 28/10/2011 | Tim Harrup
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