Europcar Mobility Group is pushing ahead with plans to electrify its fleet by signing a new deal on charging solutions, including for customers.

NewMotion will provide a charge card for customers renting a Europcar electric vehicle

The rental giant announced in 2019 that it will make over a third of its fleet electric or hybrid by the end of 2023 under its ‘One Sustainable Fleet’ programme, building on its electric vehicle deployment stretching back to 2011.

It’s now signed up NewMotion to develop a complete ecosystem of charging solutions – this includes the provision of a charge card for customers renting an electric vehicle, providing them with easy access to NewMotion’s charging network, which covers some 170,000 charge points across Europe. Drivers will also be able to use the EV Charging by NewMotion app to find the nearest available charge point as well as check charging speeds and prices.

The comprehensive charging solution, which will be rolled out from January 2021, also provides Europcar with smart charge points to access the Business Hub platform that allows monitoring, management and control of the entire charging infrastructure. Europcar will also benefit from NewMotion’s end-to-end services including consulting, charge point installation and customer support.

Olivier Baldassari, group chief countries and operations officer, Europcar Mobility Group, said: “With a fleet of more than 300,000 vehicles on average, our ability to make an impact is significant. Our commitment to reducing the level of carbon emissions involves increasing the proportion of ‘green’ vehicles in our fleet and supporting our customers in their usages. Vehicle rental is an excellent vector of promotion and development for the use of electric vehicles, particularly in urban environments!

“With this comprehensive approach, we want our group to be among the European champions of sustainable mobility in the years to come.”

Baldassari added that the Covid-19 pandemic has reinforced pre-existing needs and expectations in terms of mobility and that Europcar is using the crisis as an opportunity to accelerate projects and plans that have already been started.

Other parts of the ‘One Sustainable Fleet’ programme include close collaboration with car manufacturers to grow the share of ‘green’ vehicles within the group’s fleet, customer education, training of group employees and the launch of attractive offers to develop customer appetite for green vehicles.