The installed base of telematics devices in the car rental and leasing market reached 5.0 million in 2020 according to a new market research report from the IoT analyst firm Berg Insight. The COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on the world economy lately are believed to drive demand for digital business models, which is good news for the uptake of telematics in both the rental and leasing industries. The total active installed base is forecasted to reach 10.5 million by 2025 across the car rental and leasing fleets in Europe and North America.
Several categories of telematics applications are today used in the context of car rental and leasing. “The main benefit of deploying telematics among car rental and leasing companies is improved control over assets”, said Martin Svegander, Senior Analyst at Berg Insight. Fleet managers have an obvious interest in tracking the location of their vehicles and monitoring their status in order to prevent fraud, theft and mistreatment. In the long run, this leads to reduced operational costs and also potentially lower insurance premiums. “Telematics technology may also enable new business models or services such as long-term pay-per-use contracts for private vehicles or automated mileage reporting for company cars as well as contactless car rental and carsharing experiences”, Mr Svegander continued.
The telematics value chain spans multiple industries including a large ecosystem of companies. Telematics players active on the car rental and leasing market can on a high level be categorised into two broad categories. One is telematics specialists which are only or mainly active in the rental and leasing space, offering solutions for digital access or vehicle fleet management. Examples of companies present on this market include the fleet management solution vendors Webfleet Solutions, PowerFleet, Masternaut and Geotab. “Geotab has established itself as a leading telematics service provider in the rental and leasing industry and had an installed base of more than 600,000 telematics subscribers in this segment in 2020”, said Mr Svegander. Additional notable telematics service providers in the rental and leasing telematics market include IMS, Octo Telematics, Targa Telematics and Zubie as well as specialized companies such as RentalMatics and Liberkee. Telematics data integration between automotive OEMs and car rental companies have become increasingly common and it is anticipated that the involvement of automotive OEMs will increase in the rental and leasing telematics industry in the coming years. “Examples of automotive OEMs that have direct telematics integration with rental and leasing companies include for example GM, Ford, Stellantis (Free2Move) and Toyota”, Mr Svegander added.
