Too many constraints, own car option advances
AgitLab and Kuwait Italy interviewed insiders on the hypothesis of the use of an owned vehicle with mileage reimbursement
by Pier Luigi del Viscovo
Ropes have a certain elasticity and Italian ones more, but all have a breaking point. Pushing more on electrification in the fleets could exceed the holding point. All right, and what's next? Nothing, only there might be no more fleet. AgitaLab, a think tank, and Kuwait Italia asked, to a panel of insiders the former and fleet managers of large fleets the latter, how 'likely they think it is that some company will introduce into car policy the option for the employee/manager to switch to their own car with mileage reimbursement'.
Out of 166 respondents, about half considered it probable or very probable, an answer shared by a third of fleet managers alone. We had already ventilated this hypothesis from these same columns, in the aftermath of the fringe benefit reform that penalises normal cars and pushes towards electric or plug-in hybrids, but it was just a hypothesis. These results have given it concreteness beyond all expectations. Back to the rope, the chief lies in the green policies that every company has been pouring into its fleets for years, with the aim of cleaning up the guilt of moving people by car. No regulations demanded it, but the image consultants did. So they started putting pressure on executives to choose an electric car.
The answer was not forthcoming, and the meeting point was found on plug-in hybrids: big cars, with a heavy battery pack, that almost always run on petrol and consume as much as a lorry, sending costs soaring. Satisfaction rate of executives and fleet managers? Sub-zero. But patience, as long as it's company money. Now the government has intervened to smooth the fur in Brussels, and has reformed the fringe benefit system, taking thermal cars out of the budget in favour of electric or plug-in cars. The temperature has risen and by a lot, as pockets are personal. Is this enough? Perhaps not. For a few months now, there have been rumours that Transport&Environment, the Commission's muse in its mission to save the planet, has been pushing for plug-in cars to be imposed on fleets, as the public does not want to know. Drivers are good, patient people, but what wonder if the rope should give way?
