greentomatocars, London

Company Profile
Name	greentomatocars
Address	Q West, Unit 3.11 1110 Great West Road, Brentford, Middlesex
Telephone	020 8568 0022
Website	www.greentomatocars.com
About	London's environmentally friendly private hire service. By using the greenest car around, greentomatocars ensure you do the least damage to the environment when getting from A to B

Definitely does what it says on the tin!

In the London licensed private hire market, where anonymity has been the benchmark for longer than any of us cares to remember, PHV firms with a striking corporate image are bound to make an impact.

With Green Tomato Cars Ltd of Brentford , we have one such firm that took their corporate image a giant leap further, for very good reasons: ecology, the carbon footprint, the London Mayor's drive to clean up the capital's atmosphere, the whole green scene'. And it hasn't done their cash tills any harm either.

Their winning formula?

To transport their passengers in an entire fleet consisting of Toyota Prius hybrid vehicles; more about that in a bit. However, this company's  philosophy and strategy is rooted firmly in the principle of being environmentally friendly in every possible way. The business was founded in March 2006 and continues to operate - on two principles: (1) to show that green services and products can be commercially viable and part of mainstream consumer culture; and (2) to improve the service levels and treatment of staff and drivers within the private hire industry, and thereby the perception of the industry itself and those connected with it.

Cordic's innovative approach to their products and services matches that of greentomatocars; thus this IT partnership is working just fine all around. The drivers appreciate the easy-to-use display units in the vehicles, as well as cPAQ's built-in voice navigator with its live maps and turn-by-turn voice instructions.

So greentomatocars opened their doors with a fleet of four Toyota Prius, and the above goals firmly in sight. As of today (2008) their fleet now numbers 80, all company- owned and liveried as you can see in the photo; their aim is to have 100 on the fleet by February 2009. The current fleet deals deftly with around 2,500 bookings per week - 80 per cent of which are account jobs - covering every inch of territory within the M25.

Still on the "within the M25" theme, greentomatocars as a company is strong on sourcing from local and environmentally conscious operations wherever possible, such as for their signage and stationery.

Beam me up Scotty

As well as making significant investments in new vehicle technology, greentomatocars has invested in what is for their firm the most suitable and progressive computerised dispatch and booking system: Cordic's cPAQ.
Quite apart from delivering a comprehensive and efficient system for this private hire company's growing requirements, Cordic's innovative approach to their products and services matches that of greentomatocars; thus this IT partnership is working just fine all around. The drivers appreciate the easy-to-use display units in the vehicles, as well as cPAQ's built-in voice navigator with its live maps and turn-by-turn voice instructions. Two-way communication with the operator base is simplified as well, with quick taps on the screen conveying such messages as "No Show", "Vehicle Broken Down", or most importantly, if there is an emergency, passing this information discreetly both to base and to nearby vehicles on the fleet. This is on top of today's requisite technical components, such as Ringback, vehicle tracking, credit card authorisation and processing, automatic route optimisation for multi-via jobs... it's all there for the using, and greentomatocars utilizes their Cordic system to the optimum, as you might expect. However, this firm places equal importance on people power, having become the first London PHV operator to implement a Profit Share Scheme for all office staff and drivers.

The company also prides itself in observing a strict equal opportunities policy in the recruitment of drivers and staff. Additionally, drivers are offered the ability to work flexible hours. And in their free time, the company offers a heavily subsidised gym membership so staff and drivers can stay healthy.

Tool of the Trade

Getting back to the fleet for a moment, whilst it is currently made up entirely of Toyota Prius, the management of greentomatocars has an open mind to changing the primary vehicle or adding others when a more suitable alternative comes on the market. In fact, they are at this time assessing the viability of using pure electric vehicles for certain short journeys where there is only one passenger.

Certainly the Prius is fitting the bill for greentomatocars so far: according to CEO Tom Pakenham in the company's corporate report published last month, their choice of the Prius has resulted in the avoidance of more than 800 tonnes of C02 that would have been emitted had their passengers travelled in other non-green private hire vehicles. Looking briefly into the background of the Prius, its name is Latin for "to go before". It is a combined hybrid (a.k.a. series-parallel, or hybrid synergy drive) vehicle, that was first manufactured in its prototype stage by Toyota in 1997. There are pages and pages of technical jargon on about 203,000 websites if you care to delve into them; however, suffice to say herein that the computer program in the Prius shuts off the engine when the car is stopped, is reversing, or is descending hills, thereby dramatically decreasing fuel consumption in city driving. Typical petrol or diesel engined vehicles consume fuel when the vehicle is stopped, as is common in city driving. The Prius typically shuts down the petrol engine and runs solely off the battery pack at low speeds and when stopped. By using both a petrol engine and electric motors for acceleration the Prius engine can be a smaller, more efficient size and still provide acceptable acceleration. The frequent stopping and starting of the Prius engine does not cause noticeable additional wear and tear or emission problems.

So that's the rationale behind the initial choice of vehicle for greentomatocars' fleet, and it's paying off big time. But the company's green approach doesn 't stop there ; they also continuously ride herd on other ways of reducing the carbon footprint, from turning off unnecessary lights in the office, to using telematic incar "black boxes" to assess driver and vehicle performance, addressing poor driving habits or minor vehicle faults at an early stage. They also push for minimizing dead mileage wherever possible, training drivers to "plot where they drop" and avoid unnecessary backtracking journeys to the next passenger. They even recommend to customers to use a local service, rather than send one of their cars a long way out of town to perform a relatively short journey. They openly encourage shared journeys if passengers are willing, instead of booking multiple cars for what is essentially the same journey.

Taking the environmentally friendly credo a stage further, greentomatocars indulges in C02 Offsetting. (Pardon?) That is to say, those emissions that the company is unable to avoid are offset twice over through an organisation called Climate Care, which finances various energy- saving projects including the restoration of a rainforest in Uganda, the replacement of fossil fuel burning stoves with stoves that use renewable fuel in Indian villages, and the use of energy saving light bulbs in various localities in South Africa and Kazakhstan. Through the active participation in C02 Offsetting, greentomatocars was the first "carbon negative" private hire/taxi firm. It is this sort of activity, coupled with their company objectives and accomplishments, that has gained greentomatocars various awards and accolades to date, including: Green Fleet (Europe) Innovation Award: Highly Commended- 2008; Virgin Responsible Travel, Transport Award: Highly Commended-2007; Green Fleet (UK) Innovation Award: Winner-2007; Transport for London, Private Sector Award: Runner Up-2007, and Energy Saving Trust Fleet Hero Award, 0-50 cars: Winner- 2006.

As you might imagine, this sort of recognition has resulted in quite a wide range of publicity of late, such as an interview for CNN Business News, a CNN "Green Week" feature, and presentations made to various business schools and green groups, as well as participation in numerous green fairs and festivals. Do you want to learn more, including how to benefit from the company's greentomatokit yourselves? Do check out the company's website; and if you're in the capital, treat yourself to a journey in one of greentomatocars' distinctive cars - it's a truly enlightening experience!

 

Profile from Private Hire & Taxi Monthly, August 2008 www.phtm.co.uk

Back to Customer Testimonials