By FMW Editorial Staff
October 25, 2022
Apps like Google or Apple Maps are go-tos for many travelers, providing the clearest path to their destination. But while apps show how long it will take to travel by different means (walking, train, car), they don’t show such important factors as cost, carbon emissions, and the number of steps.
The Miles Consultancy (TMC) is planning on launching a new super app that will provide mobility transparency for all forms of transportation, all in one convenient place. We sat down with Stuart Donnelly, the President of Mobility at TMC, to hear more about the launch of the company’s forthcoming app.
The Origins of TMC Mobility
Donnelly explained that while he joined TMC back in May 2022, he has been working in the automotive fleet leasing and corporate travel world for 25 years.
During his time, he saw that for many fleets, sustainability was their number one mission objective. While many people are talking about decarbonizing their fleets, the challenge is how to get there.
For the last eight years, Donnelly has been working to create a new dynamic, flexible way for people to move around. This is the core of what TMC does. His mission as president of Mobility is to take the company from miles into mobility through the development of a new smart and sustainable mobility “super app.”
What will the smart and sustainable mobility super app look like?
Essentially the super app will function like the Amazon of transportation, according to Donnelly. While ground transportation is currently very fragmented, with different providers offering car rental, car sharing, ride-hailing, and public transport, TMC’s mission is to put all of that in one place.
The TMC team looks to aggregate transportation into a SaaS-based digital platform so that every time people move from one place to another, they’ll be able to move smarter and more sustainably. They want their app to provide a dynamic booking tool that helps people to search, book and pay across different modes and providers every time they move around.
TMC’s mission is to bring transparency and to help people understand what their mobility footprint looks like today. With their app, they hope to show people the 4 Cs: cost, carbon, clock and calories per minute that they move. They also aim to benchmark against the market median or best practice.
For example, Donnelly notes that if you’re running at $3-5 a minute, and the best practice in your market is 30 cents, then you’re running a 90% premium over other possible alternatives. If you’re running a TCO of around $10,000 per year and paying a 90% premium, then you have a strong incentive to take steps to change that, especially given the current cost of living crisis.
Why should global fleets in the UK, Europe, and the Americas care about what you are doing?
Donnelly mentions the geopolitical effects that are combined with the impact of post-COVID, the semiconductor chip shortage, the 10% increase in the purchase cost of new cars over the last year, and the 100% increase in energy prices.
He states that with all of these factors, people are living and working differently now–they’re driving less, commuting less, and working from home more. But although these behaviors have changed, other behaviors around mobility have not changed to accommodate that.
The new super app is designed to bring transparency to our lives, shining a light on an area that most people don’t think to consider. According to Donnelly, many consultants estimate that 70% of the population will live in cities by 2030.
Because most people live in and around cities, there’s more reason than ever to reduce our carbon footprint. While electrification is a powerful tool to help reduce our carbon footprint, we need to embrace other solutions such as shared mobility as well. Mobility iQ will help organizations reduce their Scope 3 emissions, including emissions coming from the supply chain, corporate travel, and employee commuting. These account for 90% of their total emissions.
How does it work if someone wants to sign up? Does it integrate with what fleet managers might already be doing?
Donnelly stated that there will be several packages, the first of which is a basic package. This tracks the 4Cs and helps create the user’s iQ. It’s a monthly subscription per user in the fleet world, which costs less than a couple of dollars per user. It also helps them accurately report their Scope 2 and 3 emissions.
Another package is the iQ piece, which allows the user to search, book, and pay. This fully managed service is a monthly SaaS fee that costs less than a Netflix subscription.
Donnelly explained that the app is currently in stealth mode, with plans to launch the first phase in October. They currently have 140,000 subscribers and are capturing mileage data and combining it with the fuel data for ICE and EV to calculate reimbursement and taxation.
They’re aggregating data from many different sources to give global fleets true visibility across different vendors, lease companies, and providers.
The key difference between the mobility app and telematics devices is that the app tracks the user, not the car. This is because they want to understand how people move across all modes of mobility, which they do use location services on mobile phones.
Are you going to go after individual consumers somewhere down the line?
Mobility iQ isn’t just targeting the fleet of mobility users but is a universal product that can apply to commuters, corporate travelers, and people who have relocated globally. The challenge that he notes for companies is who is in decides how each person moves from point A to B.
With this mobility Super App, Donnelly expects to deliver the best user experience based on which form of transportation is the most efficient, cost-savvy, and sustainable.
