ZipCar starts fleet management service

Zipcar, the car-sharing service that's based in Cambridge, today announced FastFleet by Zipcar, a new service that enables government and other fleet managers to leverage the same technology that powers Zipcar's consumer fleet.

Washington, D.C., which is the first city in the country to adopt the system, estimates it has saved more than $300,000 during a four month pilot of FastFleet. As expansion plans are underway, the District of Columbia estimates it will save more than $1 million in the first 12 months.

Nationally, approximately 4 million vehicles currently are deployed across thousands of fleets within local, state and federal governments. Typically, fleets are sized to meet peak demand, which means on a daily basis thousands of these cars and trucks sit idle.

ZipCar will be marketing FastFleet as a way to enable fleet administrators to easily transition from inefficient, dedicated vehicles, to high efficiency shared vehicles with no reduction in availability for drivers. Additionally, FastFleet-equipped vehicles can be located in a distributed network of locations, instead of a centralized "depot". Employees use an reservation system over the web, phone or mobile device, to select and reserve vehicles. A swipe of a wallet size access card unlocks the doors of a reserved vehicle, courtesy of an integrated card reader mounted under the windshield.

FastFleet mirrors Zipcar's car-sharing model with one key difference: FastFleet does not supply the vehicles. Instead, client fleet administrators determine the numbers, types and locations of vehicles, which are then equipped with FastFleet's in-vehicle technology, wirelessly linking them to a dedicated FastFleet server. While FastFleet makes reserving and driving a vehicle a snap for employees, the benefits to fleet managers are even more significant. FastFleet's administration console enables unprecedented visibility and control over the vehicles in the fleet.

With FastFleet, fleet administrators may:
* Design and configure their fleet footprint in real time for optimal utilization
* Locate and track vehicles through a global positioning system
* Manage hundreds of critical activities including preventive maintenance, fueling, billing, and fleet distribution, just to name a few
* Analyze usage and diagnostic data, automatically captured during every trip
* Utilize FastFleet's robust, experience-driven analytics to stay on top of trends, ahead of situations and in control of their fleet

"At a time when governments across the country are being asked to do more with less, FastFleet makes it easy for them to quickly and easily reduce costs while still meeting the mobility needs of their employees," said Scott Griffith, Zipcar's chairman and CEO. "FastFleet by Zipcar is a new model of efficiency, cost savings and environmental benefit for fleet managers. This is a national roll-out of a new Zipcar line of business."