Steinar Danielsen, Sustainability Lead at Volvo On Demand answers three questions.
This interview is in english.
2022-10-11
1. Car sharing feels like a good thing for sustainability, as it leads to fewer cars out there - but how can it get more accessible for a wider group of people and purposes?
We are very much focused on driving change and providing a viable alternative to car ownership for people and companies in cities. When moving from ownership to access, we learnt early on that the task — what our customers want to accomplish — is central, rather than the cars themselves. The perceived convenience that a privately owned car provides is what we are fighting against.
We saw early on that scaling car sharing to a broader audience is an optimisation problem of enormous proportions. Data is the fuel of Volvo Car Mobility, from the start, we have focused on the power of A.I. and Machine Learning to provide not only a great customer experience but to improve our operational capabilities. Using data to ensure the right car, in the right place, at the right time for our customers.
National Policy also plays an important role in making car sharing more accessible to a broader group. For example, the legal classification of shared cars. This does not exist today. Such a legal classification would enable shared cars to be officially supported in the public domain. If a new classification were in place, that would enable a change in the VAT on shared vehicles to be in line with taxis and public transport - 6% and not 25% as it is today. These policy changes would better promote a mobility mix adapted to the sharing economy, reducing the number of cars — lowering emissions and congestion.
2. Car sharing leads to fewer cars, but Volvo as a whole wants to sell more cars – how does that ad up?
Volvo Cars’ vision is the Freedom to move in a personal, sustainable and safe way, and Volvo Car Mobility is a long-term investment by Volvo Cars. Through the mobility platform we have developed, we are reaching a wider base of urban customers with newer preferences — Access to cars rather than ownership. In different phases of life you have different needs, access to a shared car, or to own a car. With Volvo On Demand, there is a Volvo for a wider span of customer preferences and needs.
Looking further ahead, Volvo has the ambition to be a circular business by 2040. Volvo On Demand is a product service system in the usage phase of the circular model. This enables a reduced consumption of resources by fleet ownership, and circular mobility solutions are a step towards decoupling growth from our impact on the environment.
3. Spreading and increasing knowledge about sustainability is often viewed as an important factor for driving change - how do you work with that in your organisation?
From the outset, Volvo Car Mobility founded the company on a sustainable business model — A product service system that allows higher utilisation of the products Volvo put into the world. So sustainability is at the core of what we do. When defining my title ‘Sustainability Lead’, it was important to me that I was not the ‘Head’ of sustainability. A title like that indicates that sustainability is a function or, worst case, a silo. I move between and work with many different parts of the organisation to secure that we build a responsible service that creates a positive impact for our customers, our partners and the cities where we are active.
As a digital product company, we work through the lenses of Feasibility, Viability, and Desirability. Additionally, we include the lens of Integrity, where our sustainability lens lives. Our loyal customers have a high car dependency, and we must ensure that our service lives up to their demands of dependability and convenience. When increasing knowledge about sustainability internally, it is important to define the underlying forces that drive sustainability. For Volvo Car Mobility, the more convenient and dependable our service is the more sustainable it will be.
It is also important to quantify our efforts, and a Key performance indicator for measuring our impact is our Replacement Rate. This is defined by the number of privately owned cars that each shared car we put in our fleet replaces. That number is currently up to nine. This is the base KPI that we can pull out other effects that our service has, for example, space freed up in the city, emissions saved from sharing cars etc. As a KPI it is also very, very easy for our employees, stakeholders and customers to understand the effect our service has in our cities.
Här kan du läsa mer om Volvo On Demands hållbarhetsarbete:
https://www.volvocars.com/se/on-demand/hallbarhet
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