New carbon and tax tool helps fleet cut costs

A new carbon and tax analysis tool, TCOPlus is helping major international fleets reduce their carbon footprint, cut their tax bills and control their fuel budgets more effectively. Major fleets in the oil, food and services industry, are already seeing significant savings from using the new solution.

TCOPus is the brainchild of FleetVision founder and global managing partner, Hans Damen and Bart Vanham, founder and managing director of Fleet & Driver Care and the author of the International Fleet Taxation Guide.

TCOPlus works by offering international fleet managers a carbon emissions-based savings strategy for European car policies by first accurately measuring the organisation’s fleet carbon footprint on a country by country basis.

Once an accurate benchmark has been achieved for each individual country, the solution then allows the international fleet manager to input a series of ‘what if’ scenarios to show the total cost savings in carbon emissions, taxation and fuel costs that can be achieved across the fleet if the fleet policy is changed and more fuel- and tax-efficient vehicles are selected.

 “TCOPlus enables an international fleet manager to refute any national arguments that it is too difficult to measure carbon footprint, reduce taxation and cut fuel spend. It cuts easily through the corporate firewall that some countries, through vested interests of whatever kind, build around themselves.

”A typical 8.5% saving on corporate taxation and fuel costs is just the starting point for the level of savings we can create for major fleet operators with users regularly achieving savings of 15-20%, and we already have the evidence to back us up,” said Vanham, who has more than 15 years’ experience in the European fleet industry.

“Our concept provides the international fleet manager with a framework to monitor and control the total cost of the fleet. This takes into account current and future trends without impacting on the attractiveness of the cars within the policy. This may be important if the cars are seen as a recruitment and retention tool,” Damen said.

The solution works by, in phase one, making a detailed evaluation of the data input into the system on a country by country basis. This analysis takes around eight weeks, after which the output is directed to a secure website where the fleet manger can model a series of different scenarios to find the most cost and tax effective fleet policy for his fleet overall.

Key measurements are carbon footprint, fuel budget, and car taxation both corporate and personal, such as benefit-in-kind taxation. This is produced for each country and is consolidated on a European level.

“Our tool will render instant results on both a country and a consolidated European level for the strategies set. Once a presentation is made to the board with suggested savings that could be achieved, any adjustments requested by board level sponsors can be accommodated through instant recalculations to show the impact of each decision made,” explained Damen.

An additional stage of the process can be to help the fleet manager build a pan European fleet policy based on the selection of the most fuel and tax efficient vehicles identified in the initial analysis stage.

“We can identify the most efficient vehicles at a European level and recommend their use at a local level in other countries to achieve the savings the fleet managers and board may have in mind. Incentives can also be used to make sure your drivers make the right choices” said Damen.