The “Stadtservice” (city services) department of the “Stadtwerke Unternhmensgruppe Offenbach am Main” municipal utility group is expanding its vehicle fleet to include four electric vehicles. As a result, another business unit of the Stadtwerke Unternehmensgruppe is increasingly focusing on climate-friendly drive systems.
Following the switch to electric buses in the Mobility business unit and the conversion of the Hebestrasse site for this purpose, the Stadtservice department is now also operating electrically and climate-friendly with further vehicles. Now, in the vehicle fleet available to all employees, two cars have been replaced by electric VW e-up! models. Above all, however, the street cleaning operations have received two new Streetscooter vehicles – as already in use at the German Post, to replace old decommissioned vehicles.
The quiet, zero-emission cars are to be used primarily for waste collection on the recreational area along the banks of the Main River and for street cleaning in the pedestrian zone as waell as in the remainder of the city.
Last year, the Stadtservice already received funding of 400,000 euros for the new purchases. The project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (Bundesministerium für Verkehr und digitale Infrastruktur) as part of the “Clean Air 2017-2020” immediate action programme under the Electric Mobility Funding Guideline. The funding guideline is coordinated by NOW GmbH and implemented by the project administrator Projektträger Jülich. Janine Mielzarek, authorised signatory from the Mobility business unit, travelled to Berlin to receive the funding notification. Currently, electric vehicles cost 1.7 times more than a conventional reference vehicle with a combustion engine. The funding will be used to pay 90 percent of the additional investment costs.
“We would like to change our vehicle fleet over to electric vehicles to an even greater extent, but there are currently no suitable offers on the market for our special requirements,” says Peter Walther, Managing Director of the Stadtwerke Unternehmensgruppe. “We will apply for further funding as soon as suitable innovations are available. As a municipal company, we also see it as our task to act sustainably so that the air in our city is cleaner and the quality of life of our citizens is improved. Electric mobility plays a major role in this and we would like to contribute wherever we can.”