In Europe commercial vehicles currently produce a third of all CO2 emissions in the transport sector. As an important measure for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in transport and for achieving climate protection targets, Germany will be the first country in Europe to introduce a new CO2 differentiation of truck tolls. Its introduction will send a price signal that will make the use of trucks with alternative drives significantly more attractive for the freight transport industry.
This is the result of an amendment to the law with which the German government intends to accelerate the switch to climate-neutral drive systems. The proposed legislation serves to implement the amended Eurovignette Directive, which came into force in March 2022. Among other things, this provides a CO2 differentiation of the truck toll for heavy goods vehicles by March 25, 2024 at the latest, as well as the inclusion of all trucks with a technically permissible total mass of more than 3.5 tons from March 25, 2027.
In order to fulfill the Eurovignette Directive the German government plans the following changes to the toll system in 3 phases.
- Phase 1: Introduction of a CO2 surcharge
On December 1, 2023, the new CO2 surcharge and the new CO2 differentiation of prices are introduced. - Phase 2: Tolls for trucks weighing more than 3.5 tons
On July 1, 2024, the toll obligation will be extended to trucks with more than 3.5 tons technically permissible total mass. - Phase 3: Zero-emission vehicles
Zero-emission vehicles are exempt from tolls until December 31, 2025. From January 1, 2026, they pay a 75 percent reduced toll rate for infrastructure costs – plus the toll rates for air pollution and noise pollution.
New Prices in PTV Developer
Since the implementation of this new law implies significant increases of toll prices for freight transports PTV Developer customers will already now be able to predict the toll price for the trips of tomorrow taking into account the predicted price changes of implementation phase 1 and phase 2.
Simply by setting the corresponding startTime in the options of the route calculation call you can – already today – estimate the future toll prices for your transport taking into account the planned prices from phase 1 or phase 2. By additionally setting the new parameter co2EmissionClass you can even predict the prices dependent on the co2EmissionClass of your truck. If no co2EmissionClass is set the default of 1 is applied. Today most of the trucks will have the default co2EmissionClass of 1. To determine if your truck may have another co2EmissionsClass please refer to this page here.
Important Note Due to a change in the assignment of the weight class from maximum permissible total weight (see F2 in official registration documents) to technically permissible total mass (F1 in official registration documents), vehicles that have not yet been tolled may have to be tolled as of December 1, 2023. On the other hand vehicles that are already tolled may fall into higher weight classes now. To get always the correct price make sure to set the right value in the parameter for totalPermittedWeight in the routing request.
Try it out in out PTV Developer toll tutorial and app.
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