When Stability Becomes a Liability
On paper, company car fleets appear predictable: vehicles are purchased, depreciated, insured, and expensed on schedule. But, in a volatile market, that stability is an illusion.
According to KPMG, total fleet operating costs jumped 18% year-over-year, driven by surging depreciation and maintenance expenses. Those “steady” costs that once helped CFOs plan with confidence have now become some of the least controllable items on the balance sheet.
Idle Assets: The Silent Drain on Capital
Economic uncertainty means fluctuating demand as well as idle vehicles that sit depreciating on the lot. Those underutilized assets still carry insurance, maintenance, and registration costs, quietly eroding working capital.
A recent Automotive Fleet survey found that 48% of fleet managers identify underutilization as their top cost concern in 2025. In other words, nearly half of company fleets are absorbing unnecessary overhead.
By contrast, organizations using Insights Pro, a Motus solution, can visualize utilization in real time, identify unused assets, and model the financial impact of converting underperforming vehicles to reimbursement-based programs.
Insurance and Risk: The Cost Curve That No One Controls
Fleet risk isn’t just operational; it’s financial. The Element Fleet Industry Trends Report found that insurance costs for company car fleets rose nearly 12% year-over-year, marking one of the steepest increases in a decade.
Those premiums are driven by higher accident frequency and the rising cost of vehicle repairs. Each incident doesn’t just raise claim costs. It can inflate renewal rates for years, making risk management a critical finance function.
Programs like Motus Protect with Road Smart proactively address this exposure by equipping field employees with safety training embedded in their workflow, which can help companies put safer drivers on the road and control insurance spend.
Depreciation: Predictable on Paper, Painful in Reality
Depreciation is the largest cost driver in any fleet program and the hardest to predict in an unstable market.
Automotive Fleet’s 2025 analysis found that depreciation accounted for up to 45% of total cost of ownership for company car fleets, while used-vehicle values dropped sharply after 2023 highs. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory similarly reports that depreciation often exceeds fuel and maintenance costs combined.
That volatility turns what used to be a capital investment into a recurring risk, one that CFOs can’t hedge against without flexibility.
Technology and Data: From Guesswork to Precision
In response to these pressures, more companies are leaning on data-driven decision-making to manage costs dynamically. A recent report noted that 62% of passenger and light-fleet operators now use telematics or predictive maintenance tools to track utilization and prevent downtime.
Within Insights Pro, CFOs can take that one step further by connecting vehicle data directly to cost forecasts and ROI models that show where savings and risk reduction converge.
A Market Shifting Toward Flexibility
The global fleet management market tells the same story: flexibility is winning.
A recent market forecast indicates that cloud-based fleet solutions grew nearly 69% in 2024, as finance and operations teams prioritized transparency and scalability.
Academic research reinforces that trend. One researcher found that AI-enabled fleet optimization can reduce total cost of ownership for passenger fleets by up to 17%, proof that smarter, data-driven programs are outperforming traditional ownership models.
The CFO Takeaway
Company fleet ownership once promised control. Today, it delivers volatility.
Between depreciation swings, insurance inflation, and idle assets, company car programs have become unpredictable cost centers. Modern reimbursement models, particularly Fixed and Variable Rate (FAVR) programs, help CFOs reclaim predictability by converting fixed fleet costs into flexible, usage-based expenses.
With Motus Reimburse, finance leaders can:
- Benchmark fleet vs. reimbursement TCO using real data
- Model savings across different economic conditions
- Forecast outcomes with integrated IRS-compliant analytics
In uncertain markets, flexibility isn’t just smart finance; it’s strategic foresight.
Turn volatility into visibility.
Discover how Motus helps finance leaders replace unpredictable fleet costs with data-driven, scalable savings.
