New mobility app shows CO2 cost of business travel

The Miles Consultancy (TMC) has developed a smartphone app enabling corporates to track the cost and carbon impact of business journeys – including public transport, walking and cycling – and steer employees towards the cheapest and most sustainable options.

Named Mobility iQ, the app joins TMC’s portfolio of fleet data-management solutions and supports corporate customers’ growing efforts to reduce CO2 emissions while also adapting to changing travel patterns.

Having analysed more than half a billion miles of fleet data, TMC said business mileage had declined by 20% since Covid struck, due to hybrid working. This has increased vehicle downtime just as tax incentives are encouraging corporates to put drivers into more expensive electric company cars.

Phase one will start by the end of March. It uses the phone’s sensors to detect when employees are moving, enables them to classify journeys by mode (walking, cycling, driving or different forms of public transport) and calculates the cost, CO2 emissions, calories burned and time taken. It then benchmarks them against peers and suggests improvements.

Calculations include fixed costs – such as benefit-in-kind tax, insurance and the monthly lease – for the user’s default vehicle, whether it's a company car or their own. They can also select other vehicle types, such as buses, trains and taxis, with preset values that can be altered to reflect real data.

Journeys marked as business use are uploaded to the iQ Online dashboard, providing fleet and mobility managers with an overview of Scope 1, 2 and 3 (direct and indirect) CO2 emissions and costs. They can track changes, drill down to specific details and produce reports for annual statements.

For privacy, the app doesn't record start or end locations.

Phase two will begin shortly afterwards. This aggregates previously fragmented data from different mobility providers, showing the cost, time and environmental impact of all available options and enabling employees to book and pay for multimodal journeys from within a single app.

Corporates will be able to opt into a 'miles rewards’ system, run externally by TMC, rewarding smarter travel choices with points that can be redeemed against future journeys.

The company’s president of mobility, Stuart Donnelly, explained: “Whether it's an energy metre, an iWatch or a Fitbit, the starting point is understanding your baseline. Then from there it's about understanding what the alternative is.

“Mobility iQ isn't designed to push people to replace their cars. It's designed to give them more transparency about what they've got today, and what the alternative is. If they want to choose the alternative, Mobility iQ will help them to navigate that.”