Good practice:

Leipzig- City for Intelligent Mobility

The preparation of the concept started in 2012 when the course was set for its development. As result of an intensive participation process (interviews with stakeholders, speaking with electro mobility companies, participation of the city administration, etc.) the City of Leipzig’s Office for Economic Development finally developed a concept in 2017 to become a “city for intelligent mobility”. An important forum for the development of the concept was “e-Allinaz”, an initiative founded in 2015 by actors like the city of Leipzig and well-known companies in the region to intensively promote electromobility in Leipzig. The concept contains about 40 activities, many of them dealing with e-mobility, that aim at reducing CO2 emissions and noise pollution and thereby increase the liveability for the population. The selected activities are supported by and implemnted with the participation of various stakeholders from administration, industry and public. Activities include leasing contracts for BMW for i3 e-cars for employees of the city, contracts with the car-sharing companies to make the vehicles available to city employees, funding measures to simplify using e-mobility for SMEs, increasing parking spaces for e-vehicles in the city, improvement of charging infrastructure and many more.

With the already existing network of automobile manufacturers in Leipzig, the city has a strong network of stakeholders. The forum e-Allianz further enables and supports the implementation of the concept. The majority of costs needed to implemnent the activities are made available by the City.

In 2015, BMW handed over 50 leasing i3 e-vehicles to LVV (Leipzig Unitilities and Transport Association) that can be used by its 9.000 employees. In 2017, the city administration signed a contract with the car-sharing comapny teilAuto to make the cars available for its employees. Other implemented activities e.g. include the usage of e-busses for public transport, installation of 25 mobility stations to simpliyfy the usage of various means of transport or the increase of charging stations.

Any drastic change in the way a city organises itself must be carefully planed and consent must be build among all actors concerned. The showcased projects are supposed to convince all relevant parties to act. The city can afterwards create funding conditions to continue and expand the initiatives. The success of a future grant application depends on the courage and pioneering spirit to implement new local policy instruments, as well as in an experimental setting too.
Thereby it shows the willingness to act and the decision to strengthen urban electro mobility despite limited financial resources. Nucleus of this willingness to act is a working group of willing people, who in addition to the department of economic development also brings partners from industry and economy together. Leipzig is an industrial location for electro mobility. Electro mobility is not a forced excitement. Electro mobility is part of a new form of life quality becoming part of the attractiveness of Leipzig.