Work-related travel accounts for 41 percent of all passenger kilometres in Germany. That puts pressure on companies to tailor their mobility offerings more closely to individual sites and to how their employees actually travel.
Journeys made for work shape traffic in Germany to a considerable degree. A joint study by PwC Germany and the Institute for Mobility at the University of St.Gallen puts their share of total traffic volume at 41 percent. A further 62 percent of commutes are made by car. The authors set out how companies can bring together the individual offerings that currently sit side by side into one coherent concept.
The study "Reinventing Corporate Mobility", produced within the PwC Lab for Smart Mobility at the Institute for Mobility at the University of St.Gallen, divides the field into three areas: physical infrastructure, the means of transport themselves, and the supporting software systems.
Under infrastructure, the authors include parking space and charging points. The means of transport span company fleets, public transport services and shuttle connections. Added to these are digital applications that handle mobility budgets, manage parking capacity, organise carpooling or analyse travel patterns.
The study draws on 35 interviews with mobility managers, service providers and consultants in Germany and Switzerland. Those interviewed included mobility managers at companies such as AXA, the BMW Group and ZF Friedrichshafen, along with providers of mobility solutions – among them NAVIT. On this basis, the authors develop a framework that helps organisations establish their own starting point and select suitable measures.
Which offerings make sense depends largely on the environment a given company operates in, according to PwC. Site location, industry sector and the routes employees actually travel determine which solutions are viable in the first place. Individual building blocks such as company bike leasing, company cars or subsidies for public transport tickets – such as the popular Deutschlandticket – are already standard in many places. Comprehensive, digitally supported overall concepts, by contrast, remain the exception.
The study distinguishes three typical company profiles. At car-dependent production sites, fleet electrification, organised carpooling and actively managed parking come to the fore. For service organisations in urban locations, the study points instead to mobility budgets, public transport offerings and micro-mobility. At fleet-intensive hub operations, fleet management and shuttle services carry more weight.
A pilot study involving 100 employees offers an indication of how travel behaviour can change. Where flexible alternatives are available, participants reached for the car less often. At the same time, journeys by public transport increased.
Beyond the mobility needs of employees, the study names further factors that companies have to keep in view. These include regulatory requirements, the traceability of emissions and the cost of corporate mobility. More than half of the carbon dioxide emissions from passenger transport are linked to work-related travel.
According to the study, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for corporate mobility. For fleet managers, that also means one more offering on top will not do the job. Anyone looking to bring fleet electrification, charging infrastructure, parking, company bikes, public transport and mobility budgets together into a single concept first needs to know how employees actually travel and what conditions apply at each site. How much integrated concepts achieve at scale can only be inferred from the study to a limited extent: it rests on 35 interviews, and the shifts in travel behaviour described come from a pilot with 100 participants. (Source: PwC Germany / Institute for Mobility at the University of St.Gallen, "Reinventing Corporate Mobility – Part 1", July 2026)
Transparency note: NAVIT was interviewed as one of several mobility service providers for this study. Responsibility for its content and findings lies solely with the authors.
