E-company cars for the mobility transition: The DAX is energized

Friedrich Merz is currently doing his best to make Germany appear internationally as an incorrigible combustion nation. Many large German companies want more electric cars in their company car fleet. Many of them even have fixed rules for this.

In September, the taz asked the 40 DAX companies – the largest and most solvent companies on the German stock market – how they felt about electrifying their fleets. Five of them, including Vonovia and Airbus, left the request unanswered or provided no information; Fresenius Medical Care does not have any company car fleet.

In 15 of the remaining 34 companies, the rule applies that only electric company cars can be ordered - at least for managers, and in some cases for all employees. 16 DAX companies do not exclude combustion engines, but offer financial or organizational advantages for choosing an electric car. Only three companies - BMW, Mercedes-Benz and the insurer Hannover Re, with only 7 company cars - replied that they do not specify the type of drive their employees use in their company cars and did not provide any information about non-binding incentives.

This text first appeared in wochentaz, our weekly newspaper from the left!

Every week, wochentaz is about the world as it is – and as it could be. A left-wing weekly newspaper with a voice, attitude and the special taz view of the world. New every Saturday at the kiosk and of course by subscription.

If the mobility transition is to succeed, companies in particular must buy electric cars and say goodbye to combustion engines. Because they account for the majority of new registrations. Only one in three new cars is bought by a private individual, two thirds are used commercially. For luxury cars it is even 80 percent. “In this way, the companies also influence the used car market,” says Caroline Tiefenbach, consultant for climate protection in transport at Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH). What companies buy new now will later be offered as used cars.

“This is important because it makes it easier for companies to switch to electric cars,” says Tiefenbach. They generally have more capital than private individuals and can afford the purchase more easily. In addition, in most EU countries, companies receive more funding from the state than private individuals. On average, companies in the international community receive a tax subsidy of 6,032 euros per fully electric new car, while for private individuals it is only 332 euros.

Tiefenbach is therefore particularly critical of the fact that France and Germany want to enforce weaker CO2 standards for car traffic in the EU. Because Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron are not only campaigning for a weakening of the CO2 targets, which should encourage manufacturers to build more climate-friendly cars. The requirements for company car fleets are also to be watered down. “The Commission's proposal on corporate fleets should ensure more flexibility,” says the four-page position paper that Berlin and Paris recently agreed on. Instead of setting rigid targets, “realistic national targets” should be set for zero and low-emission vehicles.

This goes against the proposal made by the EU Commission last December. The EU Parliament will determine its position on the so-called combustion engine phase-out in November, and the Commission's proposals for company cars will also be on the agenda. Accordingly, from 2030 onwards, member states would have to ensure a minimum proportion of new electric cars in the fleets of large companies. According to the EU Commission's plans, the quota in Germany would be at least 54 percent purely electric vehicles and 83 percent including plug-in hybrids. Across Europe it would be 45 and 69 percent respectively. Above all, the EU Commission wants to ban tax incentives from 2028 that lead to large companies continuing to sell pure combustion engines.

“At that point at the latest, the federal government must abolish the company car privilege, for large corporations as well as for everyone else,” says DUH expert Tiefenbach. Due to the improved tax treatment for privately used combustion company cars in Germany, the state lost 4.2 billion euros last year.

The principle behind the company car privilege: The company provides its employees with a car that they can also use privately. You hardly have to pay taxes on this monetary benefit. For combustion engines, the rate is just 1 percent of the purchase price per month - plus 0.03 percent of the list price per kilometer of the commute.

While the federal government is lobbying for the combustion engine in Europe, the large DAX companies are already further ahead - at least when it comes to their company car fleets. Most are trying to electrify their fleets, even if the answers the taz received to its inquiry in September were very different.

Adidas and Infineon pay their employees a bonus if they order a low-CO2 company car. At Deutsche Bank, Allianz, SAP and the digital company Scout24, employees only get electric cars. Of the 82 company cars at Scout24, 72 are battery-electric, at SAP it is 8,300 out of 19,000, at Deutsche Bank 2,160 out of 4,600 and at Allianz around 120 out of 200.

Scout24 wants to reach 100 percent electric cars by the end of 2026. Siemens, Siemens Energy and Siemens Healthineers as well as Allianz, Nivea parent Beiersdorf and the pharmaceutical company Merck want to break this mark by 2030 at the latest - when, according to the EU Commission's proposal, 54 percent should be achieved.

Beiersdorf, the engine manufacturer MTU Aero Engines and BASF have CO2 limits for company vehicles. At Fresenius, Henkel, Deutsche Telekom, the chemical company Brenntag and the plant manufacturer GEA, company cars for internal service must be electric - certain vehicles for field service are still allowed to run on fossil fuels, but should be gradually electrified. The pharmaceutical service provider Qiagen, Merck and the construction company Hochtief support the installation of a wallbox at the employees' place of residence if they choose an electric company car. This is how an advantage creates the incentive to advance the transport transition.

An average share of electric cars across all 40 DAX companies could not be calculated based on the answers; Not all companies gave specific figures on the size of the fleet and the number of electric vehicles. After all, of the 20 companies that provided comparable answers, half said that more than 50 percent of the fleet is already fully electrified. So you have already almost reached the value that the EU Commission wants to achieve in four years.

According to a study by the Climate Neutral Initiative, 30 percent of all new company cars ordered in Germany in the first half of 2026 were battery-electric. And almost three out of four electric company cars were built by the VW Group, BMW or Mercedes-Benz. From the large car manufacturers who recently made headlines in Germany, especially with the crisis and job cuts. The big German brands have now made up ground in electric car sales - but the profitable batteries are still too rarely produced here. And overall, international competition, especially from China, is further ahead in the area of ​​electromobility.

The fact that the federal government wants to weaken the planned EU requirements for company car fleets with help from Paris is not helping the domestic auto industry. On the contrary: rapid electrification of corporate fleets could be a job booster, according to a study by the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research on behalf of the transport association T&E. If the EU fleet requirements were combined with so-called Made in Europe clauses, this could create 134,000 additional jobs in Germany.

The added value of car manufacturers could increase by 7.8 billion euros. At Volkswagen alone, a clever implementation of the Brussels ideas could create between 14,000 and 56,000 new jobs, as the group sells a large proportion of its cars on the European company car market.

The French president insisted on strict Made-in-Europe standards. With them, Macron wants to protect the European market from global competition, for example by only granting tax advantages for products if they are largely manufactured in the EU. On the other hand, there is Merz, who wants to soften the end of the combustion engine. Conservatives, Social Democrats and Liberals have now agreed to reject the stricter Commission proposal for the electrification of company car fleets. Politics is lagging behind many large companies when it comes to the drive change.