Meet Eleonore, Head of Product

What do you do at hiyacar?
Hiya!
I’m Eleonore, the Head of Product at hiyacar.

Who do you work with? How do you deliver hiyacar’s vision?
I work with every team but mostly with the tech team. I help deliver hiyacar’s vision by gathering insights and feedback from our members & partners, our member support & growth team and our developers. I’m responsible for prioritising what the tech team works on next, and I’m also responsible to measure the impact of new features.

What are your credentials/past experience, for working in your position?
I used to work at Koolicar, a now defunct peer-to-peer French & Canadian car sharing startup as a product manager. Their tech team was located in Montreal, Canada, where I used to work, and the service was only available in France. I am therefore very familiar to compete with Drivy when it gets to offering the best solutions!

What do you like about working at hiyacar?
I love that we are so member focused, and that I get to be able to meet the people that use our product and make our service the best in the UK. Peer to peer networks are all about people, and when I used to work for Koolicar, it was hard to be so far away from our members!

What’s your background?
I was born in France but moved with my family to Montreal when I was 10 years old. In January 2019, I moved to London so that I could keep working in an industry that I love. I now live in Lower Clapton, and I really think not enough people are sharing their car over there!

What do you enjoy doing when you are not working?
Bouldering, cycling, playing the trumpet and the ukulele. I’m part of a beginners brass band in Finsbury Park as 2nd cornet!

What’s one thing that not many people know about you?
I’m super slow at reading the time on a clock :sweat_smile:


What do you like best about our apps? What’s the worst? Let me know, I want to make the perfect product for you!

1 Like

Hello Eleanore,
Ok let’s give you my wish list:

  1. true access to the keyless technology so that if I forget the key I can also use my phone or better still a feature that books the veh offline when I’m using it or it’s away from a geo location. Would be good to benefit from the tracker if you can’t remember where you left it or it’s stolen.
  2. driver/hirer to get a pin point of where the car is, not to expect it to be right outside a town address where it might be parked a street away.
  3. Ability like Turo to request reimbursement for cleaning, damage, extra mileage, bus lane fines, fuel discrepancy, etc,
  4. ability for hirer to tick box to offset carbon and Hiya to partner with someone for this.
  5. faster payment after booking, checkout = bank transfer or Paypal.
  6. key ring, I keep saying it but it’s the cheapest and most obvious addition, spare key in the glove box, nice big key ring so it’s found quickly and easily, it’s also free advertising.
  7. ability using phone to take car offline for a time period instead of a date period.
  8. app to change notification for messages; 1 notification/email please, not one every time they hit return key.
1 Like

Hiya James!
Thanks for sharing!

  1. An owner Quickstart key is next on the roadmap and next in terms of our big projects :slight_smile:
  2. Same with sharing the accurate location of the car at the pick-up. This is not as time consuming so should come out prior to the Owner virtual key.
  3. I will look into this, currently our claims process is the best way to do it but we can definitely improve the form.
  4. This is not on our roadmap but I like the idea. Do you have any ideas for partnering?
  5. We do not plan to change the payout timing for now or the provider (We use Stripe).
  6. We do have key rings that are sent with the owner pack, did you receive yours?
  7. Do you mean hours instead of a full day?
  8. This is will on its way. We will let our members chose between email, SMS or push notifications instead of sending all 3.

Please keep sharing ideas and feedback we really appreciate it!