When the mobility transition is discussed, the same topics usually dominate: expansion of public transport, cycling infrastructure, electrification of private transport. What is often overlooked: The most powerful lever for sustainable behavioral change lies not in private mobility, but in employee mobility.
"Employee mobility has always driven mobility in Germany," explains René Braun, Founder and CEO of NAVIT, in the podcast "Money & Mobility" by mobile.de. "Also worldwide. If we look at aviation activities - why do private individuals actually fly from A to B now? Air traffic was initially always used by companies. No consumer could afford such mobility."
This historical perspective reveals a pattern that runs through all mobility revolutions: Corporate mobility has always been the innovation driver that later shaped the mass market. And exactly this pattern is repeating itself now in the transformation towards multimodal, sustainable mobility.
The history of mobility is a history of diffusion from corporate mobility to private mobility.
In the 1950s and 1960s, flying was a privilege for business travelers and the upper income classes. Companies financed the early demand, which enabled airlines to build up fleets and establish routes. Only when this infrastructure existed and economies of scale lowered prices did flying become a mass phenomenon.
The consequence: Business travel not only built the aviation industry but also shaped the travel behavior of entire generations. People who fly for work also fly more frequently privately.
In Germany, around 60 percent of all new cars are registered as company cars annually. These vehicles not only shape the current vehicle mix on German roads but also influence which technologies prevail.
Electric company cars lead to employees gaining experience with e-mobility - testing range, using charging infrastructure, adapting driving behavior. This learning curve significantly lowers the threshold for purchasing a private e-car.
"Most new registrations on the roads are company cars. That also means that they are the ones actively driving the mobility transition."
The mechanism is always the same: Companies finance early demand (because they can justify ROI via business processes). Infrastructure and offers emerge (because a scalable market opens up for providers). Employees gather experience (without private financial risk). Behavioral changes diffuse into the private sphere (because barriers have been dismantled). Exactly this mechanism is now working in the multimodal mobility transition.
The theory sounds plausible - but can it be empirically proven? NAVIT has enterprise customers in the triple-digit range and processes their mobility transactions. The data is clear.
"We have customers who offer their employees, especially in large urban areas, the newer types of mobility. And we see in surveys that employees then forgo their own car and switch only to the budget and are more open to new mobility."
The causality is clear: Flexible mobility budgets covering e-scooters, car sharing, public transport, and bike sharing lead to employees getting rid of their private car. Not for ideological reasons, but for pragmatic ones: If the company finances efficient, flexible mobility, owning a car becomes an unnecessary cost center.
Another fascinating data pattern: The users of new forms of mobility are continuously getting older.
"I'll just take the scooter as a classic example: We can clearly see in our data that this is shifting further and further back. This means the average user on a scooter is now 35 years old, and seven or eight years ago, when scooters came onto the market, they were about seven or eight years younger on average."
What does this mean? The generation growing up with new forms of mobility keeps these habits - and pulls them into higher age groups. At the same time, the inhibition threshold for older generations drops when they can experiment in a professional context (low risk, low costs).
The professional context is the perfect "safe space" for mobility experiments: The company assumes the financial risk, social pressure is lower (all colleagues use it too), and practical barriers (app download, registration, payment method) are minimized by integrated solutions.
If one wants to accelerate the mobility transition, the question arises: Is state regulation or corporate initiative the more effective way?
Political infrastructure projects take years, often decades. The expansion of public transport, new bike paths, charging station networks - all this is subject to lengthy planning, approval, and construction processes.
Companies can roll out mobility solutions within weeks. For example, the Berlin company GetYourGuide, a leading online broker for tours, activities, and entrance tickets, implemented the NAVIT mobility platform within a month. Since then, the 650 employees have had immediate access to the full mobility offer, which also includes bike subscriptions from Dance, another young company from Berlin.
There are around 45 million employed persons in Germany. Even if only a third of them are reached by employer-financed mobility offers, we are talking about 15 million people - a lever that no political campaign can reach.
Particularly relevant: These 15 million are not randomly distributed but are concentrated in urban and suburban areas with high traffic loads. Exactly where behavioral changes have the greatest impact.
Political measures are often based on surveys and declarations of intent ("70 percent would switch to public transport if..."). These "stated preferences" are notoriously unreliable.
Companies work with "revealed preferences" - actual behavior. If 95 percent of employees actively use a mobility budget, this is not a hypothetical scenario, but measurable reality.
These data also enable continuous optimization: Which means of transport are used when? Which routes are the most popular? Where are there bottlenecks? Companies can react agilely based on these insights - faster than any traffic planning.
Political measures for the mobility transition are often understood as "renunciation": driving less, higher costs, restrictions. This creates resistance.
Corporate mobility offers, on the other hand, can be presented as a "benefit": More flexibility, lower private costs, new possibilities. This creates acceptance.
This psychological difference is fundamental. People who feel they are winning something change their behavior more willingly than people who feel they are losing something.
How exactly does employee mobility lead to lasting behavioral changes? Three psychological and economic mechanisms work together.
Behavioral change requires repetition. Someone who tests an e-scooter once a year will not become a permanent user. But someone who uses it daily on the way to work develops a routine.
Employee mobility creates exactly this routine. A full-time employee has over 200 trips to their workplace and usually travels the same route at the same time.
This combination is ideal for habit formation. After a few weeks, the new form of mobility becomes automatic - and this automatism transfers to private trips (shopping, visiting friends, leisure activities).
A private car costs an average of 300-600 euros per month (leasing/depreciation, insurance, maintenance, fuel/electricity, parking fees), whereby many people significantly underestimate the actual costs of a car. When the company takes over mobility costs, the economic calculation changes.
A central insight from the conversation between René Braun and Benedikt Middendorf in the "Money & Mobility" podcast: Flexibility is the most important driver for acceptance - even more important than sustainability.
"First of all, there really is the willingness to give employees more flexibility. That is an important point."
Flexibility does not mean that everyone has to use everything. It means that everyone can use what is optimal for their individual situation.
Example 1: The Suburban Commuter
Monday: By e-bike to the station (5 km), then with the Deutschlandticket via S-Bahn into the city. Tuesday: It is raining heavily, which means taking car sharing to the office. From Wednesday to Friday: Home office, local trips with e-scooter sharing.
Example 2: The Big City Employee
She covers the commute daily with the subway (Deutschlandticket). Client appointments are attended with car sharing or taxi/Uber. Evening events: E-scooter back home. Weekend: Bike sharing for leisure trips.
This flexibility is fundamentally different from the traditional "one means of transport" solution, such as a company car for everyone. It accepts that mobility needs are heterogeneous - between people, but also for the same person depending on the situation.
René Braun on the car vs. bike debate:
"For me, it doesn't have to be this opposing position. A functioning mobility concept relies on companies offering the right mobility adapted to the situation."
This is shown in a comparison between city and country. In the country, the car often remains the means of transport of choice: "Then you have to have your vehicle standing in front of the door, because how else do you want to move efficiently?" In the urban Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin, however, the question arises, "whether I really need to have a vehicle in front of the door now?"
This differentiation is crucial. Mobility transition does not mean that everyone gives up the car. It means that the car is used where it makes sense - and alternatives where they work better.
Companies that offer this flexibility enable their employees to learn this optimization. And this learning curve is the actual lever of transformation.
Where does Germany stand in international comparison? A surprising conclusion from the podcast: Germany is not a pioneer in multimodal mobility, but a laggard.
"There is already a homogeneous intention in Europe to change the topic of mobility," explains Braun. "Is Germany in a pioneering role there? For me, the glass is usually always half full, but there I definitely have to say, unfortunately, we are not."
The reasons are primarily structural. The automotive industry is dominant.
German companies that build flexibility and data infrastructure in employee mobility today have better chances not to miss the connection with autonomous driving.
The discussion about the mobility transition usually revolves around billion-euro investments in infrastructure, political directional decisions, technological breakthroughs. In doing so, we overlook the lever that lies directly in front of us: the 45 million people who drive to work every day.
René Braun puts it in a nutshell: "Employee mobility has always driven mobility in Germany." That applies to aviation, it applies to the automobile - and it applies now to multimodal mobility.
The figures from practice are clear. When companies offer their employees real flexibility, they use it - with usage rates of over 90 percent. People give up their private car. They try new means of transport. They change their behavior.
Not because they are being proselytized. Not because they have a bad conscience. But because it works for them. Because it is practical. Because it saves money. Because it gives them more options.
That is perhaps the most important point: The transformation happens not through renunciation, but through gain. More flexibility. Lower personal costs. Suitable mobility for every situation. Sustainability comes as a positive side effect - but it is not the reason why people participate.
Companies that invest in employee mobility today do so out of pure self-interest. They want to become more efficient, reduce administrative effort, be more attractive to talent. That they thereby contribute to the mobility transition on the side is almost a coincidence. But a very effective one.
