Corporate car sharing is a way of pooling fleet vehicles, where several employees share a pool of vehicles instead of each having an assigned car. Each employee books a vehicle through an app for as long as they need it, unlocks it without a physical key using their smartphone or a badge, and returns it at the end of the trip. The vehicle is immediately available for the next user. This on-demand approach replaces permanent assignment and significantly reduces the number of vehicles needed to cover business travel.

Setting up car sharing takes four steps. First, audit your current fleet's actual use over two to three months, measuring each vehicle's utilisation. Second, define the target pool and access rules, separating vehicles that will stay assigned (highly mobile sales staff) from those that will be shared. Third, equip vehicles with the chosen technology (OEM connection, Fleeti device, connected key cabinet) and configure the platform. Fourth, roll out to employees with change management support, usually starting with a pilot site before expanding. Fleeti supports every step with a dedicated project manager, from the initial assessment to multi-site rollout.

A company car is assigned to a named employee, who has exclusive use of it for business and often personal trips. It stays assigned even when not in use, so its cost is fixed whether it is driven 20 days or 5 days a month. A pool vehicle, by contrast, is shared by several employees who book it on demand for as long as they need. Nobody has it permanently. This difference explains the observed ratio of one shared vehicle replacing three assigned vehicles: a shared vehicle covers several successive users in a day, while an assigned vehicle spends 60 to 70% of its time parked on average.

Published feedback from car sharing providers points to a 25 to 40% fleet reduction on average when moving from assigned vehicles to a shared pool, with no loss of operational availability. The ratio can reach one shared vehicle for three assigned ones in heavily under-used fleets. The result depends on several factors: average fleet utilisation before the switch (30 to 40% in France), the share of office-based versus mobile staff, and the quality of the initial usage audit. On a fleet of 100 vehicles with an annual TCO of €10,000 each, removing 30 vehicles saves €300,000 a year, before parking and other savings.

Yes. Car sharing makes sense from around ten pool vehicles, as soon as the ratio of vehicles to potential users allows real pooling. In small fleets (fewer than 50 vehicles), car sharing mainly targets pool cars used by several employees (customer visits, errands, site visits) rather than assigned company cars. Access technology is sized accordingly: a connected key cabinet and three or four equipped vehicles are enough to start an effective service. Payback is quick, as one to three vehicles can go in the first year.