Vimcar: 100,000 connected vehicles - a data treasure for e-mobility

The Connected Car Start-Up Vimcar has set a milestone for the company by announcing its 100,000th connected company vehicle. In the young company's history, more than 222 million journeys or 4,292,220,186 kilometers have been recorded. This makes the fleet management specialist claim to have Germany's largest pool of mobility data. The product portfolio, tailor-made for medium-sized businesses, is seen as the foundation for the growth of the software of a service start-up to one of the "fastest-growing European technology companies," as consultancy firm Deloitte assessed.

"We now manage more vehicles than most German leasing providers. Vimcar is rapidly developing into the digital standard product for medium-sized businesses. I think the corona pandemic will accelerate this trend even further," predicts Vimcar founder and CEO Andreas Schneider.

The provider's software manages hundreds of thousands of digital vehicle documents, such as leasing contracts, trip logs, and expense receipts. Within a few years, the Berlin start-up has evolved from a trip log specialist to a leading provider of fleet solutions for medium-sized businesses in the DACH region, as reflected by the interim results from Spree.

The Beginning of All Data: Cross-Manufacturer OBD Interface

The starting point was marked by a cross-manufacturer plug for the OBD standard interface and matching software, with which the company automated the handwritten trip log. "Our trip log app has saved users statistically over 141 years of lifetime for other things," advertises Schneider. "Vimcar defuses the minefield of trip logs – and some auditors are deprived of one of their favorite subjects," confirms Norman Peters, Managing Director of the German Tax Consultant Association e.V. In the next step, founders Andreas Schneider and Christian Siewek launched "Vimcar Fleet" in 2017, a digital all-in-one solution for medium-sized fleets.

"The pressure for digitalization in medium-sized businesses is high, and at the same time, expertise, time, and budget regarding mobility are limited," reports Schneider.

These products are designed to be set up without IT effort, be immediately productive, and easy to handle in everyday life, covering all areas of fleet management from live tracking to theft warnings, CO2 reporting, cost analysis, and driver training, continues Schneider. Besides Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, they have also been active in the UK since the summer of 2020, a bold move that even the BBC has reported on. Parallel to developing their own software, they also collaborate with other companies. For example, the Berlin mobility data specialists, together with UTA, offered a connected fuel card or developed an integrated car-sharing solution with automotive supplier Witte. BMW customers could activate the Vimcar solution at the push of a button without having to install additional hardware in the vehicle.

"Soon Vimcar will offer an interface to workshops to better manage the handling of damages. A similar implementation is also conceivable with leasing companies and insurance companies," announced Schneider. 

The Data Foundation for Electromobility

The future of the company car lies in its resource-efficient use. For this, they have the data and can help customers with relevant questions around e-mobility and resource efficiency, promises the company. For example, the Vimcar software can be used to analyze the CO2 emissions of a fleet. A utilization analysis identifies unused or unprofitably used company cars and helps optimize the fleet size based on data. Software-supported route optimization can save valuable kilometers and time, they further advertise.

"Electromobility makes sense especially when it is thought of as connected and data-based. Vimcar is in the pole position to significantly shape the topic of sustainability in professional mobility as a European company," Schneider believes.