Good news for the environmentally conscious: With immediate effect, employees from the Hamburg metropolitan region who commute to work in their own car to Hamburg can now obtain an e-vehicle at reduced rates. The German government is promoting the leasing of e-cars for employees in Hamburg who come from the districts with the highest number of car commuters. This includes: Pinneberg, Segeberg, Stormarn, Herzogtum Lauenburg, Harburg and Stade. The condition for eligibility is that the e-cars are leased for at least 24 months and used for commuting to work in Hamburg.
The Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI – Bundesministerium für Verkehr und digitale Infrastruktur), in close cooperation with the Hamburg Senate authorities, has initiated the new funding programme under the motto “Pendlerströme unter Strom” (“Commuter flows under power”) in order to improve air quality by reducing nitrogen dioxide emissions. Hamburg is one of the communities most severely affected by NOx emissions in Germany.
The target group consists of private individuals who use their vehicles to commute to Hamburg for work-related reasons. They can now use an e-vehicle and take advantage of the same government funding incentives as major customers and fleet operators from industry and commerce. In this project, which is unique in Germany to date, the daily route taken by private users to work in Hamburg is put on an equal footing with general commercial traffic, so that attractive preferential conditions become possible.
The subsidy amounts to 40 percent of the additional costs of an electric vehicle compared to a comparable conventional vehicle. The support can be combined with the existing, so-called “Umweltprämie” (“eco-rebate”). Interested parties are not required to submit their own funding application, as the funding procedure is conducted by the leasing companies involved. For example, a small vehicle is already available for a heavily reduced leasing rate of around 100 euros per month.