7 Reasons to focus on B2B Deals in Shared Mobility

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Since car2go (now Share Now) started its first pilot with 50 cars in 2008, shared mobility has been a rollercoaster experience for all of us. Excitement for new ways of transportation was a big thing; every vehicle type (e.g. kick-scooters, mopeds, cars) was offered as free-floating in a shared fashion. The hype hit some obstacles such as stricter regulations, operators that died (OFO, oBike), operators that consolidated: business seems difficult, but the major opportunity, B2B, is mainly untouched.

Especially low utilisation numbers play a key role in this disillusionment of the B2C industry as-is. Average usage of privately owned vehicles per day is being compared to usage time of sharing systems. Years of experience and numbers released in publications indicate that shared vehicles moved on average 1–2 hours per day (data is vehicle type and city dependent). To achieve real sustainability, which is the current focus — and make a real difference compared to privately owned vehicles — these wall-hit numbers have to increase.

“Utilisation-per-day” as KPI plays a fundamental role in the shared mobility industry, and this cannot be pointed out enough. It is the key metric for all major operators on the streets. To increase utilisation numbers, shared mobility operators have worked on developing user demand prediction algorithms, implementing marketing strategies, working on partnerships with Maas operators, and improving availability of vehicles by optimizing maintenance — but this is B2C focused.

Increase utilisation and revenue with B2B offers

1. B2C limits in achieving high daily utilisation rates per vehicle
   To get maximum utilisation we need to diagnose every hour of the day: Instead of focusing on high usage time periods we should look at the low usage periods, and how to make the best of them. Outcome of the analysis: B2C market have limited vehicle use because of people’s daily life routine
2. While people are working, vehicles are less likely to be rented
   High demand for shared mobility is of course weekdays in the morning, evening, and on the weekend. People use it to commute to work and to get around outside of the office. The typicality of the 9 to 5 office hours drive low demand during this timeframe, opening up big potential in between
3. New mobility rarely exists within companies
   By interviewing employees & fleet managers in companies, and by looking at the mobility portfolios of corporations, we have seen a lot of potential to open up corporate eyes and bring the shared mobility innovation to them. The younger generation of employees demands more flexible on-demand mobility solutions instead of getting their own company car. Companies are overwhelmed by these demands as they change their fringe benefit system which worked for decades
4. Regulations force companies to lower their CO2 footprint
   Already before COVID-19’s outbreak, strict regulations for CO2 reductions were implemented and enforced by governments. The virus unexpectedly increased the speed of such new measure implementation to reduce CO2. Grants and loans from the government are getting tight to environmental goals in many countries: Improving CO2 output of company fleets can be an effective way for companies to achieve their environmental targets easier
5. Attractive pricing and innovative business logic can increase daily utilisation
   Convincing company leaders to move to shared mobility models is the trickiest part. Luckily focusing on the low demand time periods allows shared mobility operators to offer attractive price models. Implementing business accounts in the sharing app and allowing businesses to pay vehicle subscriptions monthly opened up a new revenue stream for our operators. One of the models: From 9 to 5 vehicles are migrated from the free-floating fleet to the corporate use; employees rent the vehicles using them for their appointments via a pre-booking option to reserve vehicles in advance. After business hours, vehicles are back to B2C sharing — employees can book their private trips with a strong discount
6. Monthly subscription models for companies guarantee fixed monthly revenue
   Monthly subscription deals are convenient for companies; vehicles are available, easily accessible and paid for during business hours — and the scheme generates an all-weather fixed monthly income for the operator.
7. People using sharing within a company are more likely to use it privately too
   Building awareness of shared mobility in companies does not only help with achieving CO2 output goals but also with educating employees to use more sustainable ways of transportation. Operators can get loyal users who would like to use the vehicles for their own personal matters

Don’t forget about utilisation

In the past years shared mobility systems have made huge steps forward towards adding a valuable transportation option for cities. Still there is a long way to go till Shared Mobility becomes a truly sustainable alternative to owning your own vehicle. We, the shared mobility industry, need to identify where existing transportation environments lack sustainability and think about new approaches to improve them. Decentralized fleets bear a huge potential to make transportation better for many different use cases like providing shared mobility services to businesses. By using modern technologies we can make it happen.

If you have ideas or want to discuss more B2B use cases in detail, get in touch with us.