Fleet trends are always evolving, and our MD predicts the four drivers in 2025 are the economy, ESG compliance, electrification and driver/vehicle compliance.
“All companies will be looking to control costs more effectively in 2025 due to the Budget, which although billed as a Budget for growth, will effectively restrict growth, jeopardise jobs and dampen investment across the UK. Companies are already looking for digital solutions that will help them to keep costs down but the Budget has driven that need to higher levels.
“At the same time, businesses of all sizes, not just large companies, will be looking to improve their ESG compliance, not just from an operational perspective but from a measurement standpoint, where they are accurately able to measure the results of their carbon reduction initiatives to be able to assess how effective they have been.
“The third main issue driving the fleet market will be electrification, and the truth is there is no viable second-hand market for EVs. As a result, leasing companies are losing hundreds of millions of pounds due to unrealistic RVs and leasing rates will rise inevitably as a result. We expect plug-in hybrids to become more important as a consequence.
“And the fourth main driver is the increased need and awareness of driver and vehicle compliance. We will carry out 1.5m licence checks in 2025, and companies we are talking to are looking at increasing the frequency of their licence checks – some commercial fleets to every month – as they seek to ensure that their operations are legally compliant across the board.
“Many are also asking us for walk-around checks for their vehicles through our Driver App, which is now integrated within our main DAVIS Fleet platform. They want to be able to verify the condition of their vehicles absolutely, not just carry out tick box exercises, to ensure the safety of their drivers. We’ve included the option to add images into the inspection report to give fleet managers full visibility of a particular defect. This, in addition to customisable questions and declarations, gives an accurate, detailed and relevant inspection report.
“And we still believe there is a huge grey fleet issue in the fleet market, even in some very large companies, as we have seen fleet licence checks increase by 20% but grey fleet by only 5%. There is a real naivety out there regarding the use of employee-owned vehicles that are driven on company business and attitudes in this area really need to change.”
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