Red cars may lead to red numbers

One of the largest challenges for car subscription managers is keeping vehicles on the road and "healthy." If managers can avoid vehicles being in unwanted maintenance, their profitability and customer satisfaction are headed in the right direction.

So what can managers do to maintain a healthy fleet? Managers can start on a good note by sourcing "the right" vehicles for their fleet; This could mean acquiring cars with a good reputation for low maintenance or system issues or even avoiding red cars.

Maybe you've heard that red cars are accident magnets? We spoke with our data wizard, Mattias Totland, to see if the data could confirm this story.

When analyzing imove Norway's fleet damage frequency data, we noticed that the cars most frequently damaged were, in fact, the color red. The frequency of red vehicles being in maintenance was 75% higher than the next highest culprit, white vehicles.

At Casi, we define frequency as the number of damages divided by the number of vehicles. In the graph below, you can see that the red car frequency is 0.7 - This number represents, on average, how many times red cars have been damaged during the selected period. Every red vehicle has, on average, 0.7 damages in this period, giving them a 70% chance of being damaged.

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Those are not great odds, and in order to learn what to do with this information, we, again, asked Mattias.

Mattias is a data scientist at Casi who was previously the operations manager for Western Norway at imove. He is well-versed in analyzing data and turning it into actionable steps to improve car subscription services.

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So what did Mattias suggest upon seeing this red car conundrum?

"After seeing this data, I would consider swapping red vehicles with any other color from a corresponding model - maybe even sell them out of the fleet," Mattias said.

If the sales market is not appealing, I would consider marketing these red hotrods to a customer group that has historically driven cautiously. By utilizing location, gender, or age with target marketing, we could potentially find the right match between customer and red car.

The Casi business analytics platform enables service managers to make informed business decisions to increase service profitability. Having insight into how red cars lead to red numbers is just one example of how car subscription services can be optimized through data analysis.

Interested in talking with Mattias? Submit your information below, and he will reach out to schedule a coffee date!