The potential of carbon dioxide emission reductions in German commercial transport by electric vehicles

Climate change is a serious challenge of today. In order to reach the ambiguous mitigation scenarios for greenhouse gases, strong efforts are to be undertaken. Electric vehicles are seen as a potential mean to reduce emissions and energy import dependencies of most western societies. So far, the progress toward more electric vehicles in individual passenger transport is still slow. The objective to increase the share of electric vehicles of many national governments seems to be rather ambitious. In commercial transport, mileage is usually higher, trips are planned more precisely, and driving patterns are more regular than those of private vehicles. With these and other promising factors, we assume a high potential of electric vehicles in commercial transport. Therefore, we analyze in this paper the commercial transport in Germany and especially the large share of light commercial vehicles in order to make these potentials explicit. Based on German survey data, we analyze the heterogeneous German economic sectors with top-down statistical values like daily distance categories and bottom-up values like driving and parking behaviors. By way of example, German postal services are evaluated in detail, which leads to an electrification potential of between 60,750 and 105,550 vehicles. In case of “green” electricity for charging, postal services can avoid up to 882,000 $${\text{t}}_{{{\text{CO}}_{ 2} }} /{\text{a}}$$tCO2/a, which is about 40–70 %.