Thrifty Car & Van Rental has launched a new service designed to bring a greater level of visibility and reliability to UK pool and grey fleets.

Thrifty launches new FlexiConnect pool car offering for UK fleets

It’s branded FlexiConnect and will run alongside Thrifty’s existing corporate daily hire offer to provide an alternative to running an owned or leased pool fleet or a grey fleet policy.

The service provides businesses with a fleet of long-term rental vehicles that individual employees can book for as little as 15 minutes at a time and gain instant access via a free app or secure RFID card.

It’s designed to ensure fleets have a range of high-specification, fully maintained vehicles immediately available for staff.

Furthermore, the integrated fleet management system means managers can see the vehicle’s status, location and condition, as well as access a suite of telematics data and define who can use the vehicle.

FlexiConnect is also aimed at businesses that wish to electrify their fleets – customers get full online visibility of vehicle usage and battery charge levels and can also choose and monitor where their vehicles are kept, enabling strategic charging infrastructure decisions.

Martin Wilson, managing director of Thrifty Car & Van Rental UK, said: “FlexiConnect provides fleets with all the benefits of a conventional pool vehicle fleet, while offering a new layer of visibility, reliability and control powered by our all-new app and fleet management solution The introduction of FlexiConnect underlines our commitment to offer a full range of mobility solutions to businesses throughout the UK.”

The test technology is built on the Ridecell Fleet Transformation Cloud, which allows users instant access to vehicles and provides businesses with complete visibility of the fleet.

Mark Thomas, EVP of strategic alliances at Ridecell, said: “Our team has seen the evolution of shared vehicle fleets over the past few years, and so we built our platform with companies such as Thrifty in mind – giving them the ability to provide reliable and safer services to customers while at the same time streamlining operations. We are excited to see how FlexiConnect helps Thrifty continue to grow and evolve to meet the business needs of customers.”