Environmentally friendly company cars: companies reduce their fleet consumption

D he Deutsche Bank does not mess with its employees. The company car privilege has a long tradition in the company. But the 7,500 users had to make major adjustments two years ago: in 2010, their employer introduced a kilometer limit. A cost sharing based on fuel consumption, on the other hand, has existed for almost ten years. If the desired model swallows more than six liters - this corresponds to 140 grams of CO2 in a petrol engine - a progressive increase in the costs incurred for the employee is set in motion.
'This creates an incentive to choose low-consumption vehicles,' says Deutsche Bank spokesman Klaus Thoma. This is having an effect: the number of vehicles with a consumption of less than five liters per 100 kilometers has doubled in the fleet over the past two years. 'It is our declared goal to take the development of environmentally friendly technology into account and to continuously develop the company car regulation in this sense,' says Thoma.

Employees have to pay extra consumption

A trend that runs across all industries. For example, the company car regulations that have been in force at Thyssen-Krupp since August 2011 stipulate CO2 guide values ​​for each of the five individual vehicle categories, which may only be exceeded to a limited extent and which are linked to a malus system. As a result, the average CO2 emissions of the 4,259 vehicles in Thyssen-Krupp's fleet fell from 162 to 147 grams per kilometer within a year.

At the Rewe Group, for example, the district managers Ford Mondeo 1.6 Econetic planned. If the employee would prefer to drive the 25 HP more powerful 2.0 TDCi, they have to pay 150 euros for every 0.1 liter of additional consumption - that is 900 euros for 0.6 liters more. Even if the routes are different, the German economy is marching in the same direction with its company car practices - the traffic lights are green. Bayer AG, for example, has set an upper CO2 limit of 155 g /km for its 1,200 field service vehicles. With almost 2,400 cars for other employees, there is no such limit. But you have to decide between better equipment or more performance.

CO2 values ​​of the fleets are falling

Energy company RWE has only been buying company cars since 2009, those of the ADAC Eco Test fleet seal with fouror five stars. The majority of RWE's current fleet of almost 2,000 vehicles has four eco-stars. At Hochtief, the rules for a more resource-efficient company car operation are currently being worked on. What is certain, however, is that the compulsory driver safety training for employees authorized to drive a company car will be supplemented by fuel-saving training. 'The currently newly ordered vehicles have an average value of 132 grams of CO2,' says Hochtief spokesman Christian Gerhardus. 'We're on the right track.'

At Telekom, the goal is to achieve an average CO2 emissions of 120 g /km for the fleet by 2015. Two years ago, the company trimmed the company car rule to green. For every gram of CO2 - based on a reference value for the respective vehicle category - the employee receives either a premium or a discount on the budget. In addition, Telekom uses several hundred natural gas vehicles for service.

Electric cars on the rise

Alternative drives are also available an issue in many other companies. The Eon board of directors, for example, drives an Opel Ampera from a company pool of 40 electric cars. 200 electric cars are already in service with Deutsche Bahn - from the Opel Ampera to the Fiat 500 to the Mitsubishi i-MiEV. They are generally charged with renewable electricity from DB Energie. The electricity that drives Deutsche Bank's e-car fleet is also homemade in the truest sense of the word: the energy recuperation of the elevators in the two towers of the headquarters at Frankfurt's Taunusanlage feeds the batteries of a dozen e-cars. They are available to employees free of charge for business trips in the city.