What do a reckless joyride, a 1,500-car migration, and a rural EV fleet all have in common? Each is changing how operators approach risk, growth, and loyalty.
Discover key achievements, important lessons, and the most anticipated trends set to shape the industry as 2025 unfolds.
In this issue
Driving Score: Where the scoreboard delivers the verdict
ROI may surprise you: Discover the value of telematics
Hertz 24/7: How to switch 1,500 vehicles without breaking the business
Deer shows EV car sharing can thrive beyond the city cores
Thank you, Detroit: MOVE America 2025 & INVERS Share
Industry news roundup: 5 stories you shouldn't miss
Driving Score: Where the scoreboard delivers the verdict
It’s Tuesday evening. Three customers have booked the same hatchback back-to-back.
The next morning, your crew finds bald tires, scraped rims, and a new scrape on the bumper. Now comes the dreaded question: Who pays?
Without telematics, the bill’s on you: repair invoice, lost revenue, higher premiums, but no clue who’s to blame.
With Driving Analysis, the picture gets clearer. CloudBoxx sensors track every surge, brake, and shock. It lists all the events on your fleet manager dashboard so you can review each risky driving event if needed.
But once you know who’s responsible, then what? Maybe you don’t just want to penalize bad drivers. Or, maybe you also want a way to recognize and reward the good ones. What operators really need is a clear, easy way to compare driving behavior across every trip, not just after a major incident.
🚀 Meet Driving Score.
Driving Score simplifies evaluation by analyzing all your driving data and calculating a clear score for each trip. Think of it as your personal assistant, carefully examining each journey to identify risky behavior so your dashboard reads just like a scoreboard. With Driving Score, the rentals needing attention appear right at the top, saving you from manual detective work.
Driving Score changes how customers experience car sharing.
Most riders use two or three apps on their phones to pick the closest or cheapest car. If your car is a block farther or a dollar more expensive, you’ve already lost that booking.
Driving Score gives operators a way to build brand loyalty. Think of it as car sharing’s frequent flyer program. Rack up safe trips and the perks follow: free upgrades into premium models, discounts on future rentals, or priority booking during peak hours. Customers aren’t just renting cars; they are playing to win, and they’re sticking with the operator who makes that game possible.
Takeaway: Telematics can tell us how cars are driven. Driving Score shows us which trips matter most.
Every operator gets the same question: “What’s the ROI on our system?” The safe answers roll off the tongue: save on downtime, lower claims, cut insurance costs. True enough. But here’s the twist: the real ROI of telematics is not what it saves you. It’s what it helps you build next.
Start with the basics. Every day a car sits idle equals lost revenue. Multiply that by ten cars parked instead of moving, and you’ve lost a month’s profit. Claims devour 10–20% of revenue. Telematics cuts both.
MyWheels, for example, boosted incident traceability from 30% to 93% and lifted invoice claims to 70% after implementing AI-powered damage detection. Free2Move discovered that up to 15% of customers don’t report damage. With AI detection, those hidden costs became recoverable revenue.
But here’s where ROI gets interesting. Telematics lets operators shoot bullets before cannonballs. Add ten cars to a new neighborhood before betting on one hundred. Launch an EV fleet in rural towns without changing your tech stack. Win over insurers and municipalities with hard proof that your fleet is managed responsibly.
Avoid the common trap of viewing telematics as just a tool for connectivity and cost reduction. That’s like buying a smartphone just to make calls. You miss out on 90% of its potential.
Good telematics pays for itself. Great telematics empowers you to create what’s next.
Hertz 24/7: How to switch 1,500 vehicles without breaking the business
Most operators budget 12 to 18 months for major tech migrations. Hertz 24/7 had six. The challenge: 1,500 vehicles across 700 locations in seven countries, with hundreds of thousands of euros in daily revenue at stake.
As Marc Verhees, Product Manager at Hertz 24/7, said: "We had to find a technology provider capable of quick hardware installations in the many vehicles we use in various countries."
The answer: a solution-focused partnership
Replacing telematics across seven countries and 700 locations meant there was no central garage or hub to fall back on. Every site was different, every install had to be managed locally, and the clock ticked toward the shutdown of the old system.
Hertz 24/7 pulled it off by working with third-party installers across Europe, while INVERS kept the pipeline flowing with bulk CloudBoxx deliveries from day one. The combination of Hertz 24/7’s agility and INVERS’ fast hardware supply kept the rollout on track with no pauses or surprises.
And the payoff addressed every original pain point:
Access: smoother, more secure vehicle entry for customers.
Protection: remote immobilization when assets need to be locked down.
Uptime: better reliability, fewer technical headaches, and far fewer support calls.
Efficiency: lower battery drain, thanks to hardware designed to conserve power instead of consuming it.
Takeaway: The so-called "impossible" migration has proven that, with focused planning and the right partner, even enterprise-scale fleet transformations can run seamlessly.
Deer shows EV car sharing can thrive beyond the city cores
Car sharing is often viewed as an urban phenomenon. Dense populations, tight parking, and steady demand keep fleets busy. But what happens when you try the same in a small German town of a few thousand people? Most would say it’s a stretch.
Deer thought otherwise and built a business to prove the point. Instead of chasing city centers, Deer placed station-based EV fleets in rural communities where population density is 59 people per square kilometer, not 5,000.
The logic was simple: address a real gap, not just a convenience.
Rural households spend $1,300 more per year on transport than urban ones, yet have fewer options. That gap is Deer’s opportunity.
Their formula: go local. Marketing through community networks instead of expensive ads. Winning loyalty because the service solves a daily pain point.
Designing charging infrastructure to work with low-grid, distributed setups instead of city-grade systems.
Takeaway: Deer isn’t rewriting the entire car sharing playbook, but it is showing that EV sharing can work where density is low if operators design around real needs. For others, it’s a reminder that growth opportunities may sit just outside the city map.
Thank you, Detroit: MOVE America 2025 & INVERS Share
This September, our Vancouver team gathered in Detroit for two major events: INVERS Share 2025 and MOVE America. For a week, Motor City wasn't just about horsepower.
At INVERS Share, we turned the space into a strategy session. Leaders from across the continent swapped hard lessons and sharp insights.
Highlights of the night:
Zipcar's "25 Years of Car Sharing: Powering Member Experience through Tech & Partnerships" presentation
Sway Mobility's "Increasing Carshare Utilization and Reducing Costs through Remote Driving Technology" presentation
We would like to thank Angelo Adams from Zipcar and Michael Peters from Sway Mobility for their presentations, as well as all the attendees for mingling and sharing their own insights.
Missed our INVERS Share? Next year: Vancouver! 😉
For now, let's turn the spotlight on to the rest of 2025. The second half is packed with more stops on the global circuit. From EV expos in Europe to smart city conferences in Asia-Pacific, we’ve rounded up the must-attend mobility events worldwide so you won’t miss what’s next.
#MoveUp – WiM meets INVERS (October 9, Cologne, Germany) - Women in Mobility and INVERS HQ host a panel exploring how car sharing advances the sustainable transition, followed by networking.
Mobility Live (October 15-16, Sydney, Australia) - A new APAC-focused gathering from Terrapinn, spotlighting electrification, fleet innovation, and the future of integrated mobility.
Industry news roundup: 5 stories you shouldn't miss
BMW & MINI Restrict Remote Charging - Automakers limit access to charging data, forcing utilities to reassess their plans for EV infrastructure. 👉 Read more
Smart's New Chapter - A fresh announcement for the iconic brand—what's next for Smart's role in shared mobility? 👉 See the post
Amazon's "Last Mile" Vision - Why Amazon sees last-mile logistics as the most important technology play in vehicle-based services. 👉 Read more
Gig Economy Meets Car Sharing - Zipcar explores how car sharing is evolving to support delivery drivers and gig workers. 👉 Explore
Avis + Waymo: A multi-year partnership to launch autonomous vehicle services. 👉 Read more
What did you think of today's newsletter? Your feedback helps us improve! Drop us a line at marketing@INVERS.com with your ideas, questions, or suggestions–we'd love to hear from you!
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