SAP AG will increase the portion of electric vehicles in its company car fleet to 20 percent.
By 2020, the company aims to have one in five company cars run on electrically powered engines. The initiative was launched officially today at SAP headquarters in Walldorf, Germany.
To mark the occasion, Peter Rasper, executive vice president and head of global finance infrastructure, and Daniel Schmid, chief sustainability officer, handed over the keys to the 10th electric company car owner at SAP. Fifty more electric cars are set to join the fleet by the end of the year. SAP also unveiled the 50th electric vehicle charging station to be installed at its Walldorf location, part of a global charging infrastructure the company is gradually extending. SAP is simultaneously developing a management solution that will connect electric cars SHYand charging stations in order to match employees’ mobility requirements with the available electric vehicle charging capacity.
In alignment with its existing policy for office buildings and data centers, SAP will power its electric company cars solely from SHY100 percent renewable sources. The measure is part of a long-term program aimed at returning its greenhouse gas emissions to their year-2000 level by 2020. The initiative will involve SAP cutting its CO2 footprint by approximately half of the total figure for emissions in 2007.
“Last year, our 22,000-strong company car fleet accounted for 24 percent of our overall CO2 emissions. We will only achieve our global corporate objective if we switch a significant portion of the car fleet to green energy,” said Schmid. “Our strong business growth means that the number of employees who are eligible to order a company car is increasing yearly. We want to ensure that the energy efficiency gains we’re achieving in numerous areas of the company aren’t simply canceled out by our growing company car fleet, which is why we’re investing in the e-fleet initiative and a carbon-neutral mobility concept.”
To address drivers’ concern about range anxiety, SAP conducted research and collaborated with the Future Fleet research project, MVV Energie AG, German environmental research institute Öko-institut, the University of Mannheim, Germany and the German Institute for Social-Ecological Research (ISOE). Based on a field test involving 500 SAP employees, these organizations investigated how to make electronic cars an integral part of company car fleets.
“Our objective now is to use the results to develop marketable solutions for our employees and customers. As a leading vendor of enterprise software, we have the expertise to link up the numerous aspects of electro-mobility to create an intelligent management system,” said Rasper. “Using our existing fleet management system as the foundation, we hope to provide drivers with a simple integrated solution that will analyze the length and duration of a planned journey, the car’s maximum range and charging station availability so they can intelligently plot their course before getting on the road.”
Another important element of the mobility program is an incentive system designed to encourage SAP employees to switch from conventional to electric cars by offering a battery subsidy. Combined with the tax benefits that employees in Germany receive when they order an electric company car, this subsidy largely neutralizes the differences in price between an electric car and a conventionally powered car.
