Autofleet: Driving fleet and mobility operators towards a sustainable future with Google Cloud
About Autofleet
Autofleet is one of the leading solutions for fleets and mobility operators to optimize operations and launch new passenger and logistics services. The company is active worldwide, optimizing millions of monthly rides.
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About DoiT
DoiT International works with companies to help them achieve their goals by harnessing the power of the public cloud.
Google Cloud provides Autofleet with a fast, scalable, and secure platform to deliver new solutions, shortening the development lifecycle and providing clients with the security they need.
Google Cloud results
- Enables instantaneous scaling with no extra configuration
- Provides mobility operators with the security and spatial intelligence they need to anchor core operations
- Seamlessly integrates and streamlines proof-of-concept and deployment of new services
Supports rapid expansion with Google Kubernetes Engine
Nearly 150 years after the advent of the horseless carriage, we are on the verge of a new mobility revolution that aims to get us from A to B in the most efficient, sustainable way possible. And the role of Autonomous Connected Electric Shared (ACES) vehicles is set to be crucial. "In the coming years, we’ll see a shift from private ownership of vehicles to the consumption of mobility services, especially in urban areas," predicts Kobi Eisenberg, Co-founder and CEO, Autofleet. The figures tend to agree with him. Not only are millennials and Generation Z buying fewer cars, but the number of city dwellers is also set to rise to 68% of the world population by 2050, making individual car ownership an increasingly expensive, impractical, and unsustainable prospect.
Autofleet provides solutions for asset-heavy fleets and mobility operators that help them to optimize their existing operations and launch new on-demand ride services. The company wanted to offer its customers a platform that would be secure and reliable, while being able to scale at will. So Autofleet worked with Google Cloud and MSP Partner DoiT International to base its operations on Google Cloud. "When it comes to mobility, the focus over the past decade has primarily been on growth and customer experience," says Eisenberg. "But it is now shifting to making new mobility services sustainable and efficient, and that’s what Autofleet is focused on."
"Security, reliability, and time to deployment. These are the three things we look at when choosing a technology partner, and this is what we found in Google Cloud."
—Dor Shay, CTO, and Co-founder, AutofleetPowering sustainable mobility with a secure, stable platform
Autofleet was launched in 2018 with the aim of helping businesses with asset-heavy fleets, such as car rental, car sharing and taxi companies, as well as public transport and micro-mobility operators, become more environmentally and financially sustainable.
The company offers three core solutions powered by a single platform. Its Fleet Planning Simulator enables fleet managers to plan and optimize different aspects of their fleet based on real data, such as fleet electrification planning, fleet sizing, drivers’ shifts and new launch plans, to name a few. Its fleet operation optimization solution focuses on automation and optimization of live fleet operations such as rebalancing, charging, cleaning, and servicing to increase utilization, while their turnkey ride solution optimizes ride-related services, such as delivery and logistics or passenger mobility.
The comprehensive and modular nature of the company’s solutions means that reliability, security and performance are crucial to its operations. "Autofleet powers, or is heavily involved in, the core business of our customers," Eisenberg says. "There has to be a really high level of trust because failures and downtime can have a really negative impact. Security and reliability are key requirements for us to be a true partner and enabler for the businesses we work with."
The company decided to work with Google Cloud from day one. "Security, reliability, and time to deployment. These are the three things we look at when choosing a technology partner, and this is what we found in Google Cloud," adds Dor Shay, CTO and Co-founder of Autofleet. "We really appreciate the easy integration between different components. This meant we were able to get things to production really fast. For example, the integration between Pub/Sub, Dataflow, and BigQuery and then later on Looker, made it a lot easier to proof-of-concept and then deploy the solution."
Location analysis and live vehicular traffic data are key factors in Autofleet’s solution. The company’s platform makes intensive use of several Google location-based services, by leveraging the seamless integration of Google Maps and Google Cloud, as well as the rich datasets and rapid scalability of the Google Maps Platform. The powerful capabilities of BigQuery Geospatial are utilized to process and analyze live fleet trip data, while the Distance API and Distance Matrix API are used to determine the most efficient routes and calculate accurate ETAs. The Places API provides fast and accurate address capture, and Dynamic Maps are employed for visualization and spatial awareness - all contributing to the maximization of revenues and customer satisfaction.
"The fact that most Google Cloud products can scale without additional configuration enables us to focus on our core system. For example, scaling BigQuery from tens of thousands events to millions of events to several billion events requires basically no intervention from us."
—Dor Shay, CTO and Co-founder, AutofleetScaling quickly and efficiently with Google BigQuery
The Autofleet team worked closely with DoiT International throughout the process. "DoiT International has a team of experienced cloud architects, solution specialists and engineers who help us identify best practices and the Google Cloud products that are most suitable for us, which is really valuable," Shay says. "The majority of our workloads are on Google Kubernetes Engine, and every part of Autofleet’s platform was dockerized from day one. Google Kubernetes Engine allows us to set up and tear down production environments and development on the fly."
Alongside stringent security and reliability requirements, the nature of Autofleet’s services means that the company needs to be able to scale at will and with little notice. While some companies can scale incrementally when they launch a new service, that’s not the case for Autofleet. Whenever the company signs a new client, the platform is immediately subjected to high volumes of extra traffic. "We have to be able to scale from thousands to millions of rides in one night. This was a major challenge for us throughout the development of the platform," Shay says. "The fact that most Google Cloud products can scale without additional configuration enables us to focus on our core system. For example, scaling BigQuery from tens of thousands events to millions of events to several billion events requires basically no intervention from us."
The company uses advanced machine learning (ML) models to optimize fleets globally. And the fact that the entire platform is deployed on Google Cloud makes it easy to explore high volumes of data. "The process is heavy in terms of computing," Shay adds. "We can process all that data, deploy and monitor the model, and then reassess it all within the Google ecosystem without taking data outside the cloud."
"If I had to sum up our experience with Google Cloud in a few words, I’d say reliable, scalable and secure. I’m interested to see where we can go next."
—Kobi Eisenberg, CEO and Co-founder, AutofleetLooking toward international business opportunities
Autofleet is looking forward to further scaling, developing its service offering and improving its operations. One of the company’s main objectives is to create an increasingly streamlined platform that makes more efficient use of resources. "We aim to stay as lean as possible, without any redundant resources. We use Google Kubernetes Engine usage metering to track under-utilized resources and then figure out the right way to reconfigure them," says Shay.
International expansion is also in the pipeline. The company has offices in Tel Aviv, the United States and Singapore, and is active globally across Asia, Europe and North America. Eisenberg is looking forward to increasing the company’s global team and branching out into new verticals, including smaller and medium-sized businesses. Furthermore, the two co-founders intend to reinforce their sustainability commitments through their fleet electrification solution, which helps fleet operators design and launch efficient electrification strategies. "The transition to electric vehicles is not an easy one," Eisenberg says. "Fleet managers need to ask themselves where they will charge their vehicles and how to ensure a positive customer experience. These are the questions we’re aiming to help them solve."
The company is looking forward to continuing to work with Google Cloud over the years to come. "If I had to sum up our experience with Google Cloud in a few words, I’d say reliable, scalable, and secure," Eisenberg adds. "I’m interested to see where we can go next."
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Autofleet
Autofleet is one of the leading solutions for fleets and mobility operators to optimize operations and launch new passenger and logistics services. The company is active worldwide, optimizing millions of monthly rides.
About DoiT
DoiT International works with companies to help them achieve their goals by harnessing the power of the public cloud.