Fleet Europe Editor in Chief Caroline Thonnon set the tone when she introduced the Forum quite simply with the words ‘Things will never be the same again’.

A debate on the various hot topics was then held between Jean-Marc Gales (Brand Director for PSA, and Laurent Tréca, CEO of leasing company Arval. Amongst the points to emerge were cost reduction, the changing size of the market, and the response of the two sides of the industry represented by these high level speakers – manufacturing band leasing. The evolution of procurement methods obviously exercised minds, as did CO2 and TCO amongst others.

Werner Berger, Global Fleet Manager Solution for Nestlé, and the 2009 Fleet Manager of the Year, presented with Lutz Hansen of Bayer, another 2009 winner, on Best Practices. What Nestlé has learned from the crisis is to have better control over the whole fleet situation. Werner Berger also said that a true international key account approach was needed from leasing companies, and that he had instigated longer ownership time for cars, along with more frequent policy fine tuning. Lutz Hansen said it was necessary to concentrate on both specific and general trends, with a specific focus on the environment, costs and people. And referring to the attention paid to CO2 emissions, he asked about NOx, with the stark phrase: “This stuff is actually poison”.

Richard Knubben of Leaseurope and Mark Volmerink of LeasePlan broached the important issue of the tax regime as it affects the leasing business. Changes in international accounting standards, along with the way the European Union is reflecting on this subject, were sure to have an effect on both lessors and lessees. And to illustrate the apparently illogical state of affairs at the moment, Mark Volmerink used a quote from a third party: “I can guarantee that none of you has ever flown on an aeroplane which appears on an airline’s balance sheet”. Some of the thinking, said Richard Knubben, involved making company cars as expensive through taxation, as they would be if the employee bought the car himself.

Following this, Johan Verbois, General Manager Fleet and Remarketing for Toyota Motor Europe, spoke of the effect telematics could have on drivers and fleet managers. It worked, he said, in the five key areas of economy, efficiency, ecology, customer satisfaction and safety, and would eventually be in every car in Europe .

His co-speaker on this subject, Yon Coptich of Traffilog, added that one of the main advantages was an increase in driver awareness of the impact of his driving style, and that real-time feedback to the driver on the dashboard helped ‘self-training’.

Finally, electric vehicles made their appearance. Pascal Serres, Deputy CEO of ALD Automotive, felt that electric vehicles were totally inevitable, even if many issues – and particularly battery life and cost, recharging etc. – were still to be resolved. “And don’t forget”, he said, “that just a very few years ago fleet managers were not talking about CO2 emissions. But now…”.

A panel discussion involving Dirk Dens (THINK electric vehicles), Axel Just (Audi), Uwe Hochgeschurtz of Renault, Stephan Schick from EurotaxGlass’s joined Pascal Serres in discussing electric vehicles. Some of the main points were again that they are certainly on the way, although they will be unable to totally displace the internal combustion engine in all circumstances. The general consensus was that by 2020, some 5 to 10% of vehicles sold in Western Europe may be electric.