At a recent Bundestag Transport Committee meeting, several representatives from the German freight forwarding and logistics industry severely criticised the significantly higher truck tolls planned for December 1, 2023.
Dirk Engelhardt, spokesperson for Germany’s Federal Association of Road Haulage Logistics and Waste Disposal (BGL), was among those to slam the proposals.
During the aforementioned meeting, he described the tolls as a “senseless inflation driver in the midst of an economic crisis without any steering effect.”
Engelhardt added: “With the draft law, the federal government is almost doubling the truck toll and burdening the economy and society with an additional annual burden of around 7.62 billion euros. Particularly in the case of small and medium-sized businesses, it is not easy to pass on the additional costs to the clients. Many are therefore thinking about giving up operations.” According to the BGL spokesperson, just 0.03% of the trucks on German roads are electric. It will thus take a few more years until the fleet of 800,000 trucks is replaced.
“Electric trucks are currently up to 3.5 times more expensive than a diesel truck. In addition, there is currently not a single mega charger in which a truck can be charged at least enough to reach its next loading or unloading point during a break in driving time,” bemoaned Engelhardt, who added that the timing of increased tolls was an “absolute catastrophe”.
The reason the timing is especially difficult, said Engelhardt, is that contracts had already been concluded before the higher tolls could be taken into account. Therefore, BGL believes the changes should not become active until January 1st of next year at the earliest.
Another who spoke at the committee hearing was Thomas Hansche, deputy chairman of the Federal Association of Logistics & Transport-pro, who said: “CO2 pricing requires realistic alternatives for companies, as well as sufficient financial resources for the transition to emission-free technologies and an appropriate planning lead-up for operational adjustments. However, all of these requirements are currently not met.”
Hansche also called for the entry into force of the CO2-based toll to be postponed until 2030, and for biofuels and e-fuels to be treated equally with emission-free vehicles.
Frank Huster, managing director of the German Freight Forwarding and Logistics Association (DSLV), offered his views during the hearing too.
He said that emission-free vehicles would not be usable across the board until the end of the decade. He also backed the use of biofuels in order to cut emissions, suggesting their role has been underplayed.
However, Kim Kohlmeyer from Transport & Environment Germany, was less enthusiastic about going down the biofuels route. She was quoted on the Bundestag website as saying that renewable fuels, including advanced biofuels and electricity-based fuels, would remain scarce and expensive for the foreseeable future and “will not contribute to reducing emissions due to sustainability issues.”
Kohlmeyer also differed from others in that she was enthusiastic about more electric vehicles becoming available: “European truck manufacturers, including Daimler, MAN, Scania and Volvo, are focused on bringing electric trucks to the mass market for all vehicle segments and, from 2024, especially for long-distance transport. Around 30 emission-free truck models have already been announced and will go into mass production for the European market by 2025,” said Kohlmeyer. Those backing the higher truck toll claim it will act as an insensitive for a modal shift to rail.
Prof. Matthias Knauff from the Chair of Public Law at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, is nonetheless unconvinced by this hypothesis. He told others at the hearing:
“A shift in freight transport to rail requires appropriate transport capacities, and the use of emission-free and therefore climate-friendly trucks, and their availability on the market. Both are currently only available to a very limited extent, so the avoidance of higher toll costs, which is desired in terms of climate policy, will come face-to-face against actual limitations, at least in the near future.”
Knauff added that the proposed road tolls will “merely increase the cost of road freight transport without any climate protection effects”.
