Addison Lee is now set to become the first truly global provider of executive ground transportation, LCT writes. Addison Lee’s acquisition of Flyte Tyme Worldwide Transportation and Flyte Line Transportation has created the world’s leading executive car service. The acquisition will strengthen the Addison Lee Group’s established North American business – bringing combined North American annual revenue to in excess of $100m – and bolster its position as the leading provider of managed ground transport services globally.

This latest addition to the Addison Lee Group and follows the acquisition of executive car service company Tristar Worldwide last June. The combined Addison Lee Group will operate across North America, Europe and Asia, and have a total turnover of nearly £400M (US$500m].

Addison Lee Chief Executive Officer, Andy Boland says: “This is an important moment for the executive car industry. Flyte Tyme has deep expertise and an extensive affiliate network in the United States. By combining Flyte Tyme’s North American presence with Tristar’s global operations and Addison Lee’s digital booking platforms, we can now truly lead the ground transportation industry providing, for the first time, global managed ground transportation services through a single platform”.

Founded in 1979, Flyte Tyme is based in Mahwah, New Jersey and has a turnover of $65m. Flyte Tyme has 525 staff including 375 chauffeurs. The company has a long established reputation for the highest customer service standards and reliability, and it has won numerous industry awards. Flyte Tyme is the USA’s fourth largest operator of executive cars, and will bring to Addison Lee Group’s US portfolio airport transfers, events transport services, shuttle services and black car operations. After the acquisition, Addison Lee Group’s combined US fleet will have over 400 premium vehicles in North America, as well as over 17,000 executive cars through affiliate partners.

Addison Lee Group’s North American businesses will be run by Flyte Tyme Worldwide Transportation Chief Executive Officer, Timothy P. Rose. Rose, who will serve as CEO of Addison Lee North America, says: “We feel that Addison Lee and Flyte Tyme are a perfect match, since both firms strive to provide and deliver the highest quality ground transportation in their respective marketplaces. Through this acquisition, we will be able to leverage our combined technology and client service capabilities to deliver a truly global service for our clients.”

The Flyte Tyme acquisition is the latest step in Addison Lee’s global growth strategy. Earlier in the year, Addison Lee, which is owned by US private equity firm The Carlyle Group, acquired executive car service Tristar Worldwide which operates in 80 countries across the globe. Addison Lee has also expanded its operations to cities around the UK which are now bookable on the Addison Lee app.

Addison Lee Group will now have a particularly strong presence in New York City, which has the world’s second largest corporate ground transportation market worth $1.5bn, where its brings together existing Addison Lee car services with Flyte Tyme operations and Tristar’s award-winning chauffeured limousine service.

Addison Lee Chief Executive Officer, Andy Boland says: “Our customers value our combination of the highest quality executive services with seamless, modern booking platforms. With the acquisition of Flyte Tyme, Addison Lee Group becomes the world’s leading provider of executive car services so that our global customers can take advantage of our quality, reliability and service almost anywhere in the world they want to book a car”.

Some background on both companies: Founded in Battersea in 1975, Addison Lee is Europe’s largest private hire car service company. Addison Lee is trusted by its customers to provide an exceptional service through innovative technology combined with stand- out service from experienced driver and customer service teams 99% on-time record across 10 million journeys per year. The vast majority of our customers rate Addison Lee 5 out of 5 for passenger experience. Support is always available by phone, email and social media. Customers can book by app, phone and web, and can book in advance.

Addison Lee drivers are handpicked; only 1 in 4 meet the rigorous selection standards. Frequent customers enjoy priority service and membership of our customer loyalty programme, ClubLee. Customers also benefit from off peak fares which is 30% less from typical peak pricing.

About Flyte Tyme: Flyte Tyme Worldwide Transportation, headquartered in Mahwah, N.J., with offices in New York City, Princeton, Stamford CT, Los Angeles CA and San Francisco CA, operates 425 vehicles throughout the Flyte Tyme Service Area of NY, NJ, CT, PA and California. Flyte Tyme is the 6th largest global ground transportation provider and has a network of affiliate service providers in more than 350 cities worldwide.

• Addison Lee acquires Flyte Tyme in US to create world’s largest FHV company.

Earlier this week at the Transport Research Board’s Annual Meeting in Washington DC, PTV launched its new Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) Accelerator Programme, a complete portfolio of component technologies for planning MaaS operations all the way to operating and managing MaaS in any given city around the world.

PTV Group’s strategy was explained by Miller Crockart, Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing Traffic, “Everyone has heard about the ‘Lisbon study’, in which PTV Group participated as a member of the corporate partner board of the OECD, and the potential implications of the introduction of shared mobility, MaaS and autonomous vehicles. The evaluation of such approaches is essential for all cities, transit operators, fleet operators and automotive OEMs alike.”

“The way we have previously planned for the movement of people and goods has been radically altered with the advancements of these technologies and new ‘shared’ approaches. So being able to, as it were, replicate the ‘Lisbon study’ for each city and potential operator, is something PTV Group has developed as a commercially available software suite capable of quickly and efficiently evaluating MaaS. We are already working with several cities and automotive OEMs on what we call PTV MaaS Modeller studies, which evaluate the introduction, KPIs, and appropriate parameters to allow MaaS, and eventually, fleets of AVs to become part of the overall transport eco-system.”

Crockart continued, “We are unique in that PTV Group understands the demand management side of this topic, and also the routing, scheduling and trip optimization aspects. The reason being, for many years at PTV Group, we’ve addressed the traffic demand management market, and also separately, the logistics and fleet optimization and management market. Bringing these two aspects together has given us the ideal solution to planning, optimizing and operating MaaS, and eventually the full deployment of fleets of autonomous vehicles.”

“That’s only half of the story because not only does one have to plan or model and evaluate the possibility to operate MaaS, one will also then have to integrate it with the overall ‘mobility mix’, operate, regulate and control it. We envision some rather large city operating systems or platforms will have to be constructed, and indeed some are already well underway. There are companies much larger than PTV Group who are well-positioned to develop these mega operating systems. For us at PTV Group, we see ourselves as the key intelligent mobility component provider, and our software programs and optimization technologies have been designed to plug and play within these quickly evolving third party environments.”

“PTV Group’s complete MaaS Accelerator Programme will take a client, or partner, all the way from modeling and evaluating MaaS operations, through to simulating, optimizing actual operations, controlling, and where necessary, integrating with a city or state’s overall mobility platform, or as Crockart coined it in a speech at TRB 2017, in a city’s mobility mix operating system.”

• At TRB’s Annual Meeting PTV Group launched a MaaS Accelerator Programme

Volvo Cars, the premium car maker, is to set up a new shared mobility business unit as part of a broad expansion of its car sharing and mobility services strategy, it announced earlier this week.

The new business unit will be based around Sunfleet, one of the world’s first car sharing companies that has been operated by Volvo since 1998. Based in Sweden, Sunfleet has around 50,000 subscribers generating approximately 250,000 transactions in more than 50 Swedish cities.

While Sunfleet will form the core of the new business, Volvo said that it will in future be expanded into new global markets and provide an entirely new range of mobility services to meet changing consumer expectations around how they own and engage with cars.

“Private car ownership will not disappear, but as an automaker we need to embrace the fact that it will reduce and – more importantly – change. We have a proven and profitable concept in our home market which we intend to leverage as we develop a global concept,” said Håkan Samuelsson, president and chief executive of Volvo Cars.

Full details of Volvo Cars’ revamped shared mobility strategy will be announced in coming months, but the company intends to complement current and traditional car ownership models with a range of on demand mobility solutions. Flexibility, ease of use and personalization are to be critical success factors.

The chief executive of the new business will be Bodil Eriksson, currently vice president Product, Marketing and Communications at Volvo Car USA and former senior vice president corporate communications.

“Today’s notion of mobility and car ownership is changing. By recognising this fundamental and rapid shift in individual mobility behaviour and responding to it, we ensure that Volvo will continue to be relevant in the eyes of the consumer,” said Mr Samuelsson.

• Volvo’s new mobility division will be built around its existing Sunfleet brand.

Improvements in advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) sensors are driving automation features in original equipment manufacturer (OEM) vehicles. By collaborating with leading technology providers in the autonomous driving space, OEMs have an opportunity to transform into mobility service providers and introduce levels 4 and 5 autonomous cars earlier than expected. With several suppliers already at work on over-the-air upgrades, the adoption of this feature is expected before 2025, even for conventional cars.

“Vehicles will become a living space for entertainment, work or communication, thereby offering scope for a new business model based on individuality,” said Frost & Sullivan Intelligent Mobility’s Senior Research Analyst Anirudh Venkitaraman. “OEMs’ aim of becoming market leaders in terms of technology introduction and adoption will be realised as highly autonomous vehicles are introduced.”

Frost & Sullivan’s new research, Market Analysis of Premium European OEMs ADAS and Automated Driving Strategies, is part of the Autonomous Driving & Connected Mobility Partnership Service program. This includes topics such as in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems, application interfaces and automotive application stores, human-machine interface options, safety, security and vehicle relationship management (VRM)-based telematics services, wireless technologies, cooperative systems (V2X) communication, and vehicle active/passive safety and automation.

The European ADAS market is hindered by legislations delaying the introduction of new technologies, safety mandates enforced on OEMs, and the high cost of system – all of which limit applications to higher-end vehicles. However, as sensors and algorithms become more widely available, systems costs will drop. Legislators across North America and Europe are also actively working to introduce favorable regulations.

“A major challenge for OEMs will be wider market acceptance in terms of customers trusting the technology, while addressing other technical, legal and liability issues in the race toward level-5 automation,” noted Venkitaraman. “Legislations in North America and Europe pertaining to autonomous vehicle technologies are different; hence, OEMs in Europe may need to curtail certain features to meet specific standards in North America.”

• “Collaborations with technology providers offer European automotive OEMs new growth opportunities”, says Frost & Sullivan.