# Egham visit July 11--12 Notes
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## 11--13 meeting with Ben Harvey
- Hertz (and others) aim to meet seasonal retail demand, e.g. from July to September or for Christmas
-- therefore, their fleet (number of cars) fluctuates significantly
-- on the contrary, Enterprise has stabile fleet focused on year-round demand; they have more diverse business (such as lease fleet for government and corporations, cooperation with insurance and AA to provide replacement vehicle etc)
- corporate accounts are not only for corporations
-- for example, local group of residents can pay for access to a car that only they can use; this is possible by signing up as corporate account (presented hypothetically; there isn't such an entity at present)

- Enterprise has two streams of business:
-- 1. buy (vehicle acquisition) + sell (remarketing) cars (most cars in fleet are no more than a couple of years old, buying cars in bulk means better deal from the manufacturer). Sometimes the residual value of the car may be higher than purchase price.
-- 2. rentals (branches + Car Club)

- vehicle acquisition is unprecedently difficult currenlty due to soaring demand combined with difficulties in supply chain
-- one factor is that European (mainland) car manufacturers prefer right-handed vehicles (larger market), pushing left-handed vehicles (UK+IE) to the back of the queue

### Data Discussion
- address of corporate account members (aggregated to LSOA level) can be either business or personal address
-- this is often address given when they joined so up-to-date address may be different
- data covers January 2019--December 2021 period
- most non-billable accounts are corporate
- Enterprise provides also tech-only solutions; for example council/other may ask for installing Car Club tech in their vehicle
- if 'Reserved Lot ID' starts with *yy* or *zz* it means it was redacted (either removed or the same location has now new ID (administrative reasons- eg change of council/contract etc.))
- *-B-* in 'Reserved Jurisdiction' means it is a part of a dedicated scheme
- lat/long unlikely to be included, lot location is to be deduced from the postcode (this may be good idea as some lots have fluid locations- eg parking on the street of Park Square in Leeds)
- some trip records are maintenance (cleaning, repairs etc.)
- 'Trip did not drive' may be incorrect in some instances (take non-zero mileage as indicative)
- Car Club has cca 2200 active cars but 92% of hires are car rentals so for Enterprise Car Clubs are an experiment
- analyst department of Enterprise (led by Ben) expanded from 3 to 15 people during the pandemic due to the fast changing environment and the need to interpret the data to make informed next step decisions
- lot location factors include population density and proximity to other modes of transport (+ rental branches)
- when Enterprise entered UK market, they provided a pick-up service to drive people to the rental branch for free as a differentiating themselves from competition (also, branch managers are not promoted unless customer satisfaction is above 80%)
- RQ (research question): will Car Clubs work in particular areas of UK (spatial demand prediction)?
- even though Brighton has highest proportion of LSOA with Car Club vehicles, they are not electric, but there is a plan to add/replace 30 EVs by end of the year
- sometimes there is a transition from EV to hybrid/ ICE vehicle, eg repairs with missing parts/ charging station problems

## 15--16 Keith meeting
- Keith can look at a charge status of EV vehicle in periodic snapshots one vehicle at a time but does not see the data for the whole fleet
-- if Keith provided the data, it would be useful to Eran and Enterprise when considering a network of charging points and understanding travel behaviour generally

## 16--17 meeting with Anna Bysshe (Head of Marketing)
- PCP Pay-Per-Click Marketing (eg Google search)
- some councils have official Car Club provider that they advertise on their website, some operate with multiple Car Club providers
- Anna creates marketing plans for tenders
- advertisement focus includes money-saving websites
- rental branches also promote Car Clubs
-- eg when rental vehicle is unavailable and also in general spreading word about the service for when the branch is closed (migration of out-of-hour rentals)
-- this results in some single-booking memberships
- memberships are not impulsive purchases
- email marketing has to be opt-in
- it is harder to re-activate members than keeping them from the start
- Car Club provides a number of perks (discounts,deals,etc.)
- bid to develop means developer gives money to Car Club in exchange for a number of free memberships for the new residents
- car income and lot success depends on how supportive the local groups are
- the easiest low-hanging fruit is awareness and it is more-expensive/harder to convert someone
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## 8--9 meeting with Keith to wrap up
- Keith to share spreadsheet of rental branches
- revisit Kaitlin's work shere she put people in buckets (k-means clustering) to understand 5 distinct groups of users
- Keith also has Car Near Me request spreadsheet
- RQ: how have Car Club usage patterns changed after Covid (and generally with the shift to hybrid/remote working)?
- next meeting: August 4