The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company continues to be a supplier of tires and solutions for providers of future mobility through its service innovation pilot with Borrow, a short-term, fully electric car subscription company based in West Hollywood, California.
Goodyear is using its predictive tire servicing solution for connected fleets to forecast and automatically schedule needed tire maintenance and replacement. Leveraging Goodyear’s expertise in tires, the cloud-based platform predicts and automatically schedules tire servicing via vehicle data and proprietary algorithms.
The Borrow collaboration will allow Goodyear’s Innovation Lab in San Francisco to test the solution while servicing a fleet, representing a model of emerging mobility — in this case, a short-term leasing model.
“Goodyear is focused on the future of mobility with a strong emphasis on fleets and electric vehicles,” said Chris Helsel, Goodyear’s chief technology officer. “This relationship with Borrow continues our testing of digital service solutions for consumer fleets...”
Goodyear’s focus is to service the fleet’s tires, as well as provide additional services to maximize Borrow’s uptime and customer experience. The vehicles are currently serviced with Goodyear’s mobile vans, with the potential to include its aligned dealer network and company-owned retail stores as the pilot progresses.
Borrow has put over 80 customers on the road, and by the end of 2019, is projected to have 750 cars in service. By collaborating with Goodyear, Borrow aims to service its fleet to provide a hassle-free experience for its customers.
“We’re excited to pioneer this new ownership experience within the electric car revolution,” said Rodrigo de Guzman, Borrow’s founder and CEO. “The world of transportation is evolving quickly and we’re wholeheartedly accepting that challenge in a way that’s meaningful to consumers and glad to be working with Goodyear.”
Goodyear’s effort with Borrow builds on an ongoing pilot with Envoy, a provider of shared on-demand, community-based electric vehicles, as well as a successful test program with Tesloop, a city-to-city mobility service that exclusively used Tesla electric vehicles. These initiatives were developed and implemented through Goodyear’s Innovation Lab in San Francisco, which works to connect with automakers, suppliers and mobility-related startups to build products and data-driven service models for fleets, autonomous vehicles, and other mobility applications.
