Report
Teaser, summary, work performed and final results
Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CleanPEA (AN INNOVATIVE BUSINESS MODEL FOR A USER–CENTRIC DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM TO INCREASE AND SUPPORT ELECTRIC VEHICLES UPTAKE)
Teaser
The main objective of CleanCar is to refine, scale up and bring to market readiness a user-centric ICT decision support system (CleanCar) that makes use of an innovative four-tier business model involving corporate fleet owners, vehicle drivers, EV manufacturers and...
Summary
The main objective of CleanCar is to refine, scale up and bring to market readiness a user-centric ICT decision support system (CleanCar) that makes use of an innovative four-tier business model involving corporate fleet owners, vehicle drivers, EV manufacturers and infrastructure providers. CleanCar’s purpose is to support and encourage corporate fleet owners/operators to make the change from diesel-/petrol-powered, Light Commercial Vehicles (LCV – cars and vans) to the Electric Vehicles (EVs) equivalent. This will help the EU meet its demanding CO2 emission reduction targets, as cars and vans contribute around 15% of all CO2 emissions across Europe.
Work performed
The project started in December 2015 and completed successfully in May 2016. In line with the Description of the Action (DOA), we completed the following feasibility tasks:
Task 1-Risk Assessment: We assessed the project’s technical, financial, legislative, political, and commercial risk. This includes a risk management strategy, formulating suitable contingency/mitigation plans for risk ranked low/medium/high in terms of impact and probability.
Task 2: Customer feedback and MVP iteration: We engaged with our current and prospective fleet customers and networks of EV manufacturers to get valuable feedback on the usability of our platform in order to iterate. We also sought to get feedback on our business model and tested our hypothesis up to this point. Finally, we engaged user-groups/stakeholders to validate the needs/requirements for the EV community and added value services.
Task 3: Detailed market analysis: This activity was used to build our existing knowledge of the EV sector in the EU and globally. We wanted to fully understand the global market with a particular focus on the country specific incentives systems that exist for using EVs that we need to account for in our solution or use to our advantage. The market study identified those regions whose needs are most suitable for our solution. It also acquired more detailed and recent data on market dynamics for electric vehicles across Europe and worldwide.
Task 4: IPR strategy: As we will not be able to patent the software in EU, we assessed other IPR routes in Europe (e.g. patenting other aspects of CleanCar) or outside EU where software patents could be granted.
Task 5: Comprehensive business model: We used the data and information gained during this Phase 1 Feasibility Study to update and elaborate our existing business model plan.
Final results
The alternative to CleanCar, available to most corporate fleet managers, is to manually collect vehicle pattern data and perform a manual analysis of the usage of the vehicles within the fleet. This will typically be an audit performed by an Energy Sustainability Consultant over a period of time. Outputs of this audit can then be compared with available data on EVs from EV comparison sites such as Next Green Car and Electric Car Buyer to compare characteristics according to criteria including CO2, MPG, Car Tax Band and price (and TCO) in order to ascertain EV suitability. This option is generally time consuming (manual), expensive (significant use of consultants), and with a high probability of inaccuracy (uses historic data). This is a poorly optimised and cost inefficient process. For example, consultants rates range from €40,000 per year (fixed fee) to multimillion euros (usually dependent of success rate i.e. % of savings) . Cleancar advances the current state-of-the-art by capturing and analysing data automatically and in real-time, presenting analysis results through a user-friendly mobile/web interface and generating user personalised recommendations for a fraction of the cost.
Potential impacts include:
- Reduced fleet vehicle operating costs, expected to be around €250,000 p.a. for a medium-sized fleet of 500 vehicles
- Continuous optimisation of fleet vehicle selection
- Improved Corporate Social Responsibility and environmental management
- For Fleet, CleanCar represents a €40m p.a. market opportunity