Fast, mobile charging is becoming more expensive for company cars – and that curtails an important incentive to buy.
(Photo: dpa)
In England, France or the Netherlands, company cars are the decisive pioneers of electromobility. But not in this country. Only a good 13 percent of the company cars registered in 2021 will be electric. This is in contrast to the private market, where electric cars account for 20 percent of new registrations.
The reasons are complex and range from funding to availability to the interests of the German automotive industry. Fleet managers have recently been complaining about one thing: high charging costs.
Electric cars are generally cheaper to fill up than vehicles with combustion engines, that’s clear. But that applies above all to charging at home or at the office parking lot, where you pay an average of 32 cents per kilowatt hour. With a charging card in a paid annual subscription, you pay similarly little with your own provider on the go. But electricity prices are rising.
Company cars are dependent on fast charging stations and flexibility on long-distance journeys. And that will be more expensive. A few days ago, Tesla increased the price for a kilowatt hour by more than ten cents to up to 82 cents for non-Tesla drivers. Customers of the US brand now have to pay up to 71 cents instead of 58 cents as before. The major Dutch operator Allego will charge 85 cents from October.
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
And even if the charging infrastructure is making progress, there can be waiting times for a free space at peak times. And this is precisely where the relaxed break during the charging process is difficult – the space needs to be cleared quickly after completion, otherwise blocking fees are imminent. With the proliferation of electric cars, the problem is likely to worsen rather than diminish.
When you talk to entrepreneurs or fleet managers, the complaints pile up. Charging costs approach those of a diesel vehicle when things are going badly. There are also some problems with billing, insiders report a chaos of charging cards and charging bills.
No question, this is more of a teething problem that will go away. But the structural disadvantages of electric company cars are not going away anytime soon. They are more expensive to buy, while the energy costs are partly converging. Good intentions on the part of companies to convert their fleets to electromobility are of no help here. If we want to have 15 million electric cars on German roads by 2030, we have to get the price of electricity at fast charging stations under control.
More: Why so few company cars are electric