Ridehailing giant Uber has been granted an 18-month licence to operate in London, ending a long-running dispute with the city’s transport authority.

Transport for London (TfL) had refused to renew Uber’s licence in 2017, claiming the company was not ‘fit and proper’ to hold a private hire operator licence. Since then Uber has continued to operate in the UK capital, pending an appeal, but last November was again denied a complete licence renewal due to a range of safety infringements.

At the time, Helen Chapman, Director of Licensing, Regulation and Charging at TfL, said: “As the regulator of private hire services in London we are required to make a decision today on whether Uber is fit and proper to hold a licence. Safety is our absolute top priority. While we recognise Uber has made improvements, it is unacceptable that Uber has allowed passengers to get into minicabs with drivers who are potentially unlicensed and uninsured.”

However, this week a judge ruled that: “Despite their historical failings, I find them [Uber], now, to be a fit and proper person to hold a London PHV operator’s licence.”

Jamie Heywood, Uber’s Northern and Eastern Europe regional general manager, said: “This decision is a recognition of Uber’s commitment to safety and we will continue to work constructively with TfL (Transport for London).”

Uber will have to satisfy 21 conditions as part of the new licence.

TfL said in a statement: “This 18-month license with a number of conditions allows us to closely monitor Uber’s adherence to the regulations and to swiftly take action if they fail to meet the required standards.”

Source: Fleet Europe

The EU’s target to reduce its industrial emissions by 2030 should increase from 40% to “at least 55%”, European Commission (EC) president Ursula von der Leyen (pictured) said in her State of the Union address. That would seriously burden Europe’s car industry. More efforts are needed to improve charging infrastructure and improve policies, ACEA counters.

In March, the EC proposed a European Climate Law, which would make the goal of climate neutrality by 2050 legally binding, and which would include a more ambitious emissions reduction plan than the present one.

€350 billion

Von der Leyen’s proposal to increase the target from 40% to 55% certainly is ambitious. The extra effort requires an additional investment of €350 billion per year. A part of that amount will go towards accelerating the development of cleaner cars and more sustainable energy generation (solar, wind and hydrogen).

But as yet, her proposal is just that – a proposal. The new 2030 targets will eventually be decided in a ‘trialogue’ between the EC, the member states and the European Parliament (EP). By the way, the EP’s Environment committee previously advocated a 60% reduction by 2030.

The EC’s stricter emissions targets would have specific consequences for the automotive industry. They imply that average CO₂ emissions of new cars in 2030 should be 50% below 2021 levels. The current target calls for a 37.5% reduction.

Rising emissions

The higher target may be close to impossible to achieve, experts warn. Especially since, after some years of effective CO₂ reductions, the emissions have started rising again.

From 2010 to 2016, CO₂ emissions by the average new car sold in the EU declined by 22 g/km. But as petrol took market share from diesel and SUVs became more popular, that figure has started ticking up again: by 0.4 g/km in 2017 and by 2.3 g/km in 2018, to 120.8 g/km. That is well above the 95 g/km target for 2021.

Earlier this year, ACEA asked the EU to postpone its 2021 targets. The pandemic and associated lockdowns have saddled OEMs with about 600,000 excess unsold vehicles. These conform to current emissions norms, but not to those coming into effect from 1 January. China has delayed its new emissions standards for the same reason, ACEA argued.

Job losses

So it’s no surprise ACEA is not amused by Von der Leyen’s even tougher proposal. Her target is impossible to achieve without adequate policies, the association argues. Specifically, ACEA says it would be better to first shape the right policies, notably in terms of improving the charging infrastructure across Europe, before increasing emissions reduction targets.

For its part, VDA, the German automotive industry association, has warned that massive tightening of CO₂ targets would be impossible to meet and could lead to painful job losses. The organisation regrets that the EC does not take into account the economic hardship caused by the pandemic.

Massive effort

Interesting to note is the forecast that the EU is on track to miss its current reduction target of 40%. Raising it to 55% would require a massive extra effort by member states and affected industries.

However, the EC sees its Emissions Trading System (ETS) as a key instrument to allow flexibility while achieving the overall goals and wants to expand it to include transport.

The EC hopes an updated 2030 target can be decided as early as 15 October, at the next meeting of the European Council. More realistically, talks will drag on until the end of the year.

Source: Fleet Europe

Cities only take up a small part of the world but they generate the largest chunk of global GDP. And the importance of cities is growing, with more and more people moving to areas. Smart cities can improve the daily lives of everyone living in urban areas.

“As cities grow and evolve, our model of the ideal city also needs to transform,” said Tina Martino, Head of Strategic Marketing and Intelligence at OCTO. “The concept of the ideal place where we want to live and the services we need to make that happen, need to change.”

By 2050 close to 70% of the world’s inhabitants will live in cities. To accommodate this trend cities need to adapt. If cities want to remain attractive and sustainable places where people want to live and work, they need to embrace technology.

“At OCTO we see it as our responsibility to support a better and easier life for people. And thanks to our connected technology we can serve people, make society smarter and live better”, is Tina Martino clear.

The first urban problem technology can help us solve is that of traffic and mobility, including associated issues like pollution and accidents which are directly correlated. And OCTO Telematics has just the right tools to do that.

Even if we’re working from home, as many of us are doing now, we still need to move about and around. Tina Martino explained: “This means we need to find smart solutions to adjust traffic flows and to guarantee everyone’s mobility. Smart cities understand how people are moving and where, when they are entering traffic wasting time to park, what routes they are taking, leading to an infrastructure that guarantees a seamless and sustainable multimodal mobility for both citizens and visitors.”

Connected cars are the sensors to provide information needed to understand the movement of people and represent a proxi of society future needs. Today, the penetration of connected cars has reached a point where it is large enough to feed their data into algorithms and artificial intelligence, characterizing collective movement over a territory, detecting and contestualizing events like crashes, studying their distributions to evaluate impacts and risks.  This is the way to predict future traffic flows. Once you can measure the collective mobility, you can predict traffic, you can start thinking about managing urban movements and traffic more efficiently.

But when we look below the national level, it is the world’s major cities that are the powerhouses of global growth. Teeming with industry and services, brimming with innovation, and home to swelling and increasingly more skilled and diverse labour forces, the world’s 750 biggest cities today account for some 57% of global GDP. By 2030 the 750 look set to contribute close to a staggering US$80 trillion to the world economy (61% of total world GDP) and, with it, offer vast commercial opportunity for those who can serve their needs in everything from office space to cooking oil.

COVID-19

When COVID-19 first hit Italy in the spring of 2020, images of the European Space Agency showed to what extent pollution levels went down and all the European city experienced the same situation.

Keeping track of traffic flows was also necessary to contain the  impact the spread of the virus. To this aim, OCTO Telematics was able to provide information to support a comprehension of the phenomen with data and analyses available in its publicly shared  “Mobility Data Lab, a  dashboard informing everyday about the vehicle flows across the regions and cities of Italy.

A better understanding of traffic flows has immediate benefits on other different areas. For example it allows carsharing companies to better position their stations for vehicles based on the places in the city where people are more used to stop. Charging station operators can use the same data to determine where best to install their electric charging stations based on the collective habits of the drivers. This is better for the charging station operators, who won’t need to install chargers where no-one will use them, and it is better for their users, who will find chargers where they need them most.

Mobility  data analysis provide insights to define the systematic mobility, daily routines of the travellers and this can support the city plans to to reduce the number of cars. Knowing where people are going, when they are taking to the roads, what routes they are following, is essential when planning an efficient shared mobility system that can replace private vehicles.  

The Floating car data define the morphology of the city to support the new plan for private and public mobility, to design new services  and  open new “digital roads” to overcame the physical limits of urban infrastructure”.

Digital twin

As we are entering as society in the Digital Era, our digital twin comes to life and smartphone are key to interact with the smart spaces, physical environments within which people will interact augmenting their cognitive and physical capabilities, showing their preferences and needs. We all have one and use it for everything, without making the distinction between buying goods like food or services like mobility. In a smart city, we will have a unique app, a superapp, that will be the access point to all these different goods and services with the goal to provide the citizens with a user experience able to integrate all the digital services behind.

For this new app to work, and more in general for these new technologies to be successful, systems and technologies need to be orchestrated and managed and governments have a role to play in this.

Bringing all stakeholders together is made easier if the intended result is to solve a problem society faces. Improving traffic flow and mobility more and general can be a first problem smart cities can tackle. Traffic on a city’s roads is like the blood in a person’s veins – understand how it’s moving and you can make sure the person stays in good health.

Change in mindset

OCTO Telematics mission is to “Provide smart solutions transforming our IoT Big Data set into actionable intelligence for a sustainable connected life”.  Indeed the company was able to start the digitalization of the Insurance Market introducing its technology to solve another problem society was facing – that of insurance fraud and consequently high premium rate. From this background and the experience in the connected vehicle, OCTO Telematics started developing and offering other services in the fields of mobility, fleet management and car sharing.

The technology is ready to take the first steps towards smart cities, but more is needed. “The revolution we are about to embark on also requires a change in mindset from the smart city actors and a cooperation to make things happen more rapidly” said Tina Martino.

This mindset needs to be focused on ensuring that the overall smart city chain gets strengthened. At the same time, it is vital to guarantee each person’s well-being, right to privacy and applications of  principle of ethics to avoid any possibility of abuse of information and data.

Beyond a successful  technological step, it’s necessary to be prepared to change traditional processes with new approach that can reinvent the way we live (not just keeping in place the old processes with new tools)because the smart city of the future will enlighten the smart mobility concerns we are facing today.

The road to electrification is littered with carrots and sticks. Fleet managers have to know where they are, so they can build a cost-efficient mobility policy around them. Here’s a road map of EV incentives – the carrots – and city bans of ICEs – the sticks – across Europe.

In line with the Paris Agreement of 2015, the European Union aims to be carbon-neutral by 2050. Decarbonising mobility is an important slice of the overall effort. But each member state has a different approach. As do non-EU-members like Norway and the UK.

What almost all do share: they use a mix of carrots and sticks to get citizens and corporates to switch to EVs. For corporate fleets, the best electrification policy is the one that makes efficient use of those carrots and sticks on a per-country basis. 

Fiscal policy

Fiscal policy is one of the most efficient tools individual countries have to redirect mobility behaviour. That’s why more than 20 European countries have linked car taxation to CO₂: cars that emit more are taxed more. That’s the stick approach, but most countries also offer financial and fiscal carrots, most in the form of purchase incentives, some by way of tax reductions. 

International accountants BDO have ranked European countries for the effectiveness of their fiscal carrot-and/or-stick approach. 

Four countries fall into the top category:

• Norway: there is a specific calculation of BIK for EVs, which are exempt from registration tax and VAT, and also get a reduced rate for Traffic Insurance tax
• Sweden: there is a bonus-malus system and tax relief for EVs.
• The UK: a diverse range of measures favourable to EVs.
• Denmark: has a ‘polluter pays’ policy. Taxation tends to incentivise eco-friendly cars. 

Nine countries are in the middle group:

• Ireland: continues to reform its car tax policy towards the ‘polluter pays’ principle by taxing emissions and incentivising EV purchases.
• Portugal: VAT deduction for EVs, plus some advantages for corporate income tax.
• Austria: EVs are exempt from certain taxes, such as car license duty and vehicle tax. Some state and local governments offer purchase subsidies.
• Belgium: incentives, which vary per region, include purchase incentive, reduced or no registration and road tax, 100% tax deduction for the least-polluting hybrids. 
• Finland: with tax closely linked to CO2, EVs generally are taxed a lot less.
• France: specific exemptions and bonuses are available for EVs.
• Germany: EVs get some premiums and temporary tax exemptions.
• The Netherlands: EVs are exempt from private motor vehicle tax.
• Switzerland: reduction of circulation tax for EVs; in some cantons even a total waiver. 

Eleven countries are classed as low-incentive:

• Bulgaria: EVs exempt from property tax.
• Czech Republic: EVs exempt from road tax.
• Greece: EVs exempt from classification duty.
• Hungary: EVs get preferential rate for registration tax.
• Italy: Income tax reduction if individual installs EV charger.
• Latvia: EVs exempt from exploitation tax.
• Poland: some subsidies available.
• Romania: Non-refundable grant when buying EV.
• Slovakia: EVs get some tax relief.
• Slovenia: EVs get some tax relief.
• Spain: measures vary per autonomous region.

Three countries offer (close to) no fiscal incentives for EVs:

• Estonia: doesn’t have car tax at all.
• Lithuania: no tax relief for EVs.
• Luxembourg: no tax relief for EVs.

ICE bans

Cars with internal combustion engines (ICEs) are increasingly unwelcome in a list of European cities many hundreds long and growing. If these cities are within your area of operation, you may want to adjust your electrification policy accordingly. Most bans still allow the most efficient diesel engines (Euro 6), but the writing is on the wall: these so-called low-emission zones (LEZs) will only multiply and get stricter – eventually turning into zero-emission zones (ZEZs). 

The situation is fluid and fast-evolving; rules are typically different from city to city, and the picture changes from month to month. With that caveat in mind, here’s an overview of the situation in Europe’s most important markets.

Germany
A pioneer of urban emissions reduction, Germany currently has more than 80 cities with LEZs, including all major ones. Access rules differ from city to city, but there is a national framework. Drivers must have the environmental access sticker that corresponds to their vehicle’s emissions level. Each LEZ determines who gets access, how and when. 

France
LEZs are currently in operation only in Paris, Lyon Grenoble and Strasbourg. Some LEZs are only for delivery vehicles. In each LEZ, vehicles must have the appropriate Crit’Air sticker. These are mandatory, both for French and foreign vehicles. 
 
United Kingdom
London was and remains the trailblazer, with a LEZ and a few small ZEZs (on top of a congestion charge zone). Many other cities have since set up LEZs, including Birmingham, Oxford and Manchester. Scotland has its own national LEZ framework, with cities like Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen participating. 

Italy
There are dozens of LEZs in Italy – including virtually all major cities – each with their own standards and access periods. Most are in northern Italy, some also in the middle and Sicily. In Milan and Palermo, LEZs and urban road tolling schemes are combined.

Spain
Barcelona has instituted a LEZ. In Madrid, parking costs are emissions-based (higher for more polluting vehicles, and vice versa) and there is a small ZEZ. 

All other European countries have emissions-based access restrictions of some kind in at least some of the larger cities. Any list is exhaustively long and soon outdated. It is more useful to indicate the direction of travel. 

In October 2019, 35 global cities pledged to make “a major area” of their urban centre emissions-free by 2030. The C40 Fossil-Fuel Free Streets Declaration was signed by 17 European cities, including Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Copenhagen, Manchester, Madrid and Warsaw. Some specific examples: 

• Oslo: fossil-free city centre within Ring 3 by 2024. All cars in the city fossil-free by 2030. 
• Paris: ban diesels by 2024 and petrol cars by 2030. 
• Rome: emissions-free transport in the city centre by 2030. 
• London: central London to become a ZEZ by 2025. 
• Brussels: ban all diesels by 2030 and petrol (and LPG) cars by 2035. 
•  

On top of that, many European countries have committed themselves to phasing out the sale of new combustion-engine vehicles in the near future. Here is an overview of some of the countries and their cut-off date for selling ICEs, after which only zero-emission vehicles may be sold. 

• 2025: Norway 
• 2030: Denmark, Iceland, Ireland and the Netherlands
• 2032: Scotland 
• 2035: the UK
• 2040: France and Spain

Other countries are studying similar moves and may announce their targets soon. 

The one message that shines through all these changes: we are at a pivotal moment in the history of mobility. Any corporate fleet’s future is electric – perhaps not totally, but at least significantly more than it is today.

Source: FleetEurope