What we learned at Fleet Europe

A few short weeks ago, our Geotab team attended the Fleet Europe Forum in Hamburg Germany. We walked away with new knowledge, and the below summarizes some of our learnings that we’d like to share with you.

German company employees are represented by a works council which ensures that employee concerns are considered in company decisions. The German works council system is widely seen as successful in contributing to good relationships between company management and its employees. When it comes to implementing telematics, companies have to communicate well and be sure the benefits of telematics are well understood. This includes:

• Employee safety
• Fuel, accident, and maintenance savings benefits
• Minimizing the penalization of employees based on telematics data
• Come to the rescue-ability, in regards to disputing speeding, accidents, etc.
• Fahrtenbuch (logbook) capabilities, which could save over 1000 euros per year in taxes.

In comparison to North America and the UK, the telematics marketplace in Germany is somewhat underdeveloped. This presents big opportunities, in addition to challenges of educating the market. Furthermore, fuel is especially important to the German companies (note that most of the vehicles are Diesel). Overall, fuel, maintenance, and non-tracking elements of telematics are of greatest importance, including improving on-road driver behavior. Additionally, it is interesting to highlight that the OBD port is not easily accessibly in most European vehicles. As such, T-harnesses should be used. Nevertheless, there is huge interest in telematics technology as installation fees can be avoided.

With regards to Russia, telematics is of vast interest. In this particular market, there is demand for stolen vehicle and stolen fuel technology. Although Russia does not have a developed market for the fleet management side, which is very similar to that of Italy, Russia has the biggest market in the world for aftermarket fuel level sensors.

If you have questions, we have answers! Please comment in the box below.

See also: Sustainable fleet strategies in Europe