Commercial Transport in Denmark, Austria and Germany – Status, Structure and Trends towards the use of Electric Vehicles

Kurzfassung

Commercial transport represents a significant share of urban transport and is responsible for a substantial amount of air pollution and noise. Given short distances and early planning, urban commercial transport makes for an excellent use case for the electrification of commercial transport. The aim of this paper is to analyse the commercial transport sector in Austria, Denmark and Germany to identify suitable economic sectors for the use of electric vehicles. For determining the potential for the use of electric mobility in commercial transport we analysed the economic power and number of vehicles used in commercial sectors. Furthermore we examined travel distances in commercial transport by different vehicle types. In the last step of our analysis we show the share of vehicles for which it is technically possible to replace them by electric vehicles. In all three countries examined the most important economic sector is the manufacturing sector. Commercial vehicles represent less than 20% of the vehicle stock for all three countries. High shares of vehicles are seen in the Wholesale and retail trade sector respectively the Trading sector. The mean distance of transport in Austria is 44.2 kilometres. In Denmark passenger cars used in the Professional service sector have the highest share of vehicles with a mean daily mileage of less than 100 kilometres. In all Danish economic sectors the share of vehicles driven less than 100 kilometres per day is on average between 30 and 60 percent. In Germany in nearly all sectors the share of passenger cars with a daily mileage of less than 50 kilometres is about 50 percent. The highest share (89 percent) of vehicles with a daily mileage under the 100 km mark in Germany can be assigned to the Human health and social work activities sector. The analysis of the vehicle stock and the mileage driven per day reveals a specific relevance of the Other services sectors, the Construction sector and the Human health sector for the use of electric vehicles. Based on the description of commercial transport in Austria, Denmark and Germany branches to be considered as potential early adopters of electric mobility in the next decade were identified. Our results show, that a further disaggregation of economic sectors in the progress of the project will be useful. Nevertheless the statistics from Austria, Denmark and Germany – as different as they are – show a high potential for the use of electric mobility for commercial passenger cars, vans and even light duty vehicles.