Interviews
12 Dec 17

David Madrigal, Element Mexico: "Global approach with local expertise"

One advantage Element fleet management in Mexico has in the market is that it can provide services with a global approach while using its local expertise, thanks to its alliance with international leasing company Arval, according to president of Element Mexico David Madrigal.

Join Global Fleet in our brief talk with the executive about legislation, technology, the emergence of electric vehicles, among others.  

First of all, could you tell our readers a little about what Element does in Mexico?

Element Mexico dates back to 1994 when GE Fleet was established. More recently, in October 2015, Element acquired GE Fleet Services and today we have over 190 employees in three offices (Mexico City, Monterrey and Guadalajara).

Element has a number of products to offer its clients. Among them are vehicle leasing, maintenance management, fuel management, accident management, telematics, strategic consulting, insurance financing, and the financing of material handling equipment such as forklifts.

We also provide regulatory services associated with violations, property tax, license plates, and others.

Who are Element's main competitors and what differentiates you from them?

In terms of vehicle fleet management, we share the market with Leaseplan, ALD Automotive, and Ariza. As for large vehicle financing, our competitors include banks such as BBVA, Banorte, Banregio in addition to OEM leasing entities.

One thing that differentiates us from many of them is our global capacity which has been made possible through our alliance with Arval. This enables us to provide services with a global approach but also with local expertise, to include managing operational costs, developing cost cutting strategies, and consulting to improve performance and productivity.

How has legislation been affecting the fleet management industry lately? 

We don´t foresee any major federal government changes in the short term. However, at local and state levels, we continuously face small changes in transit regulations and license plate requirements. As such, we are always updating our clients, working to keep their fleets on the road and compliant.

Telematics and big data is a hot topic nowadays.  What is Element doing to this respect?

One thing we are working towards is the “Connected Vehicle”, something that will be developed through telematics. This will be done with the support of direct partnerships with OEM’s which will help with the integration of vehicle data into our system.

Through our fuel management and maintenance programs, we are able to provide real time TCO performance, predictive analytics, and action plans aimed at improving fleet performance.

We have already deployed our new customer portal and enhanced driver application, and Mexico should be seeing a launch in 2019.  

Do you think it is too early to talk about electric vehicles in Latin America?

First of all, I’d like to say that the leasing and management of electric and hybrid vehicles will grow in the coming years. Although they only represent approximate 1% of Element’s cars today, we have fleets that are planning to adopt these technologies in the years to come.

As for costs, electric and hybrid TCO is not that attractive right now unless you put more weight on environmental impact reduction.  However, by 2025, we should see a tipping point as battery use in these vehicles should be competitively priced against combustion engine vehicles.

Finally, could you give us an idea of the company’s revenue expectations?

As we are part of a publicly traded company, we are not able to provide specific local performance indicators.  However, I can tell you that we have been seeing double-digit year-over-year growth and we expect to maintain this trend in the following years.

 

Authored by: Daniel Bland