SAP (EV Magazine) - April 2023

with the support of SAP

Sustainable mobility

Data is the new oil

Intelligent data exchange can lower carbon emissions along the supply chain, during the charging process and in cities. SAP shows how.

Driving towards a sustainable future. Together.

Every business has a role to play in building a sustainable future. SAP supports your transition to CO2-neutral electric mobility, allowing you to achieve your sustainability goals while growing your business. Our solutions cover the entire value chain, from responsible mining and manufacturing to optimized battery charging and efficient transportation of goods and people. Let’s move forward together. www.sap.com/e-mobility

Contents 04 More data please Climate-neutral through intelligent data analysis based on Catena-X 07 Interview Hagen Heubach, Global Vice President Industry Business Unit Automotive, SAP 10 Making green charging transparent Investigating the carbon footprint of electricity for EVs 14 Green urban transport SAP software solutions help cities become climate-neutral

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EDI TOR IAL

Data is – metaphorically speaking – the new oil of the mobility industry. It’s an insight that is fairly widespread. But probably very few people really appreciate what it means in practice: that in future, nothing will work without the exchange of data. Why? Because data gives us new insights: who knows the carbon footprint of their company across the entire value chain? Which car is the most environmentally friendly, from the manufacturing process through to end-of-life recycling? Who has detailed knowledge of the conditions under which lithium and cobalt are mined in far-off places? How green really is the electricity for EVs? And who helps cities to set the course for climate neutrality as efficiently as possible? Questions upon questions. At EU level, the Gaia-X data platform provides an infrastructure that facilitates the trustworthy exchange of data. Catena-X builds on this, as an open data ecosystem, co-founded by the software company SAP. The goal: to provide answers to all these questions and to drive carbon neutrality forward at many levels through standardised processes. In the face of escalating climate change, an extremely important task.

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The “SUSTAINABILITY” Extra is a supplement of MO/OVE 3/2023

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Data – the key to CO2 -neutral e-mobility

SAP sets high sustainability standards not only for itself as a company. Working with partners, SAP wants to connect up entire industries and shrink the global carbon footprint through joint data collection and analysis.

It’s a kind of invisible network that feels like it goes all the way around the globe: as a software-based company, SAP spans the entire world with its services like almost no other company. 87 percent of the world’s finance and goods flows touch an SAP system – and particularly if carbon flows are concerned, you’ll find the company involved. SAP is actively using this knowledge to help analyse, share and, above all, reduce and make transparent our carbon footprint in this world – across all branches of industry, but especially along the entire value chain of electric mobility. SAP’s vision is to help other companies achieve their own sustainability goals.

Avoiding greenhouse gases

This strategy is part of the company’s own philosophy, which aims to be carbon-neutral in business operations by the end of 2023. Climate neutrality along the entire value chain is to become binding by

2030 – significantly earlier than the leading players in the automotive industry, who have set themselves this milestone by 2039 (Mercedes) or, in the case of BMW, by 2050 at the latest – not only, but partly because it is still difficult for them today to gain insight into all the data in the supply chain.

The avoidance of greenhouse gases is one of SAP’s overarching goals. Internally, the first step is to motivate the company’s own staff to use fully electric company cars. Externally, the efforts go much further: in conjunction with partners, they are seeking to anchor sustainability data firmly in the core processes and supply chains of companies – from small businesses to medium-sized companies to industrial giants in the automotive sector and its entire supplier industry.

Why is carbon accounting such a huge challenge in the field of electric mobility? Because there are reporting obligations to fulfil and gigantic investment decisions to make. Data has so far been large-

Text: Birgit Priemer / Photos: Getty Images, Tyson Jopson, SAP

Facts about SAP

• SAP customers generate 87 percent of global trading volume ($46 trillion)

• Headquarters: Walldorf, Germany

• Founded: 1 April 1972

• Listing: Frankfurt, New York

• 111,961 employees worldwide (31 December 2022)

• Software packages for 25 industries and 12 lines of business: on-premise, cloud, hybrid

• Number one software company in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the past 16 years

ly estimated on the basis of global emission factors and managed in spreadsheets rather than analysed precisely – and this needs to change.

Catena-X is the name of an initiative based on Gaia-X (see Glossary on page 9), which began its work in 2021 and in whose creation SAP is significantly involved as one of the pioneers. It provides a cloud-based environment in which data can be exchanged and evaluated. Here companies that have set themselves ambitious sustainability goals, for example, will not only be able to get an overview of their own data, but also benefit from the insights of other companies. Because even in 2023 it is still the case that 80 percent of all companies are not sharing their data. By this they are depriving themselves, for example, of the chance to find out on a data basis how eco-friendly the manufacture of their cars is compared with other brands.

Making data available

Catena-X sees itself in this context as an industrial policy lighthouse project for the digitalisation of supply chains – with up to 275,000 users anticipated in the long term. The common goal is a standardised, global data ecosystem based on European figures, all subject to data sovereignty (see Glossary p. 9). Whoever provides their data retains full control and decides individually who should be involved in the data exchange, as well as how, when, where and under what conditions. Catena-X ensures that this is implemented safely and reliably.

The importance of transparency throughout the entire manufacturing and development process is also demonstrated by the practical example of the battery, representing as it does a core component in the transformation process to electric mobility. Only if batteries are manufactured and deployed in a truly sustainable way can the core promise of electric mobility be fulfilled – i.e. that it represents a sustainable mobility concept.

Raw materials such as lithium and cobalt are mined under inhumane working conditions, and the extraction process uses huge amounts of water. Hardly surprising, then, that established companies are themselves now launching pilot projects to better control this process – after all, they all have to comply with the Supply Chain Act, which creates a legal framework for the protection of the environment, people and children’s rights along the global supply chain.

Mercedes and VW, for example, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Canadian government during a trip by the German chancellor last autumn in order to gain access to primary sources of raw materials for themselves. No company has the capacity to certify every mine involved in the manufacturing process: standard solutions are called for. “While it is great to see more and more companies setting ambitious goals, there is still a lack of reliable, comparable data across supply chains,” said SAP CEO Christian Klein, who sees compliance with

ESG (environmental, social, governance) criteria and the requirements of supply chain laws as a “crucial step towards protecting our planet”. This is particularly difficult in Scope 3, he observes, which requires greenhouse gas emissions to be measured along the value chain of a company.

As a result, Catena-X enjoys the active participation of many companies: Mercedes, VW, BMW, Ford, the Volvo Group, ZF and Bosch are partners, as are Siemens, Telekom, Henkel and BASF and, most recently, even Google Cloud. It gives companies the ability to share data without revealing industry secrets.

Recycling of raw materials from batteries

Taking the example of the battery, the data process begins with the extraction of the raw materials and continues through their processing, use, recycling and return at the end of life. In order for this circular economy to work, serial numbers, batches and components must be tracked across organisations. It includes the production of the battery cells, the assembly of the battery pack and the vehicle, the charging and the use of the battery through to the circular material flow (Circular Battery Management, see diagram). Hardware and software inputs must be traceable all the way from production, through use and state of health, to their eventual recycling.

Emergence of new fields of business

Under the heading Second Life, new business segments are also emerging in battery recycling, which is likely to develop into a billion-dollar market in the next few years. IDTechEx market research estimates that the market for second-life batteries will reach seven billion US dollars by 2033. Recycling also offers great potential for becoming a new job machine, so to speak, although it is a challenging task: it requires information on materials, condition, functionality and even charging cycles. Only then will recycling work, and only then can an assessment of recyclability be made. To achieve this, every product is given a digital twin – across industries and the entire value chain. It should be noted that cell manufacturers and chemical companies can also participate in this process.

But SAP also enables other areas of application outside of Catena-X in order to achieve carbon-neutral electric mobility: how green is the electricity I charge, really? And how do cities manage to lower their emissions? What role does local public transport play in all this? There are carbon footprints in many places. The envisaged data analysis and transparency enables all players from small to very large to deliver on their environmental promise. It’s also high time for this to happen.

The battery life cycle

Electric vehicles are only eco-friendly if the battery is too. The diagram illustrates the circular economy of materials from the extraction of the raw materials in the mine to their recycling and reuse (second life)

Source: SAP

Questions for Hagen Heubach:

“Let’s get going!”

Where is Catena-X at today?

Catena-X is live and data is already being exchanged between the companies. As SAP, we provide some initial solutions for Catena-X with our SAP Industry Network for Automotive. In addition, one of the first operating companies, Cofinity-X, is ready – so let’s get going!

Have all players in and around the automotive industry fully grasped the importance of comprehensive data analysis on the road to becoming carbon-neutral?

I think everyone has recognised the need to exchange data. After all, it’s an issue that affects all companies across the different industries. As usual in transformation processes, there are both frontrunners and companies that hold back to begin with. The most important thing is that they all understand how Catena-X works. The top priority is the reduction of the carbon footprint.

How can this process be implemented along the entire value chain?

It’s a matter of generating comparable and trustworthy emissions data for the complete supply chain. The basis of this is a uniform calculation standard for the entire industry. Via interoperable apps, network participants are able to share their carbon footprint efficiently with business partners using a standard procedure. In this context, it is particularly important to support small and medium-sized enterprises in determining their carbon footprint. It helps in this respect to create transparency about upstream emissions (greenhouse gas emissions that occur before the refinery feedstock enters the refinery or processing plant – Editor’s note). This lets us define carbon hotspots, which we can then

address collaboratively with a view to adopting decarbonisation measures.

Tracing the use of raw materials in batteries and feeding them into a circular economy is notoriously complicated. How do you solve this problem?

The digitalisation of business processes is fundamental to facilitating traceability. The entire process from the mine to the user or recycler must be taken into account if we are to close any gaps that may exist in the cycle. The basis for this is the transparency and traceability of the product value chain, enriched with corresponding product information. Ultimately, the EU regulation of the ‘Battery Passport’, which is currently in planning, supports the sustainable transition to low-carbon mobility and energy storage, the reduction of raw-material dependency, e.g. through lifetime extension, residual value determination and the support of reuse and recycling of batteries in terms of data logistics.

We need end-to-end transparency in the data. How do you do that when 80 percent of companies don’t share their data at all? Catena-X is committed to data sovereignty, which we believe will win the companies’ trust in the data-sharing process. This means that each company participating in Catena-X retains full control over its own data, as the data is not stored centrally, but can only be accessed by previously defined partners. This takes place via a decentralised network, data contracts and secure interfaces. We’re talking about compliance with environmental and social regulations along the supply chains. How does a company

Hagen Heubach

Hagen Heubach, born in Stuttgart, has been Global Vice President Industry Business Unit Automotive at SAP since 2020 and is a board member of Catena-X. Heubach describes himself as a “child of the automotive industry” and started his career at Continental after studying in Mannheim. In 2008, he joined SAP as an automotive consultant, where he was responsible for the automotive business in Japan from 2015 on. Heubach is one of the driving forces behind the Catena-X Automotive Network, of which he has been a board member since May 2021.

manage that when the regulations are very different all over the world?

To solve this challenge, at Catena-X we are establishing regional hubs that know and are mindful of local regulations and can harness synergies. The first Catena-X hub has been created in France. It brings together companies, key players in the data economy and software edition, as well as use cases from the French automotive industry.

Do you have all the legal prerequisites, also at EU level, to make this ambitious project a success?

Catena-X is based on Gaia-X, a European project that regulates the handling of data systems on the basis of EU requirements. Catena-X applies these requirements to the automotive value chain – so yes, the legal prerequisites do exist.

You want to create a network that operates globally. Will markets like China also participate?

Global collaboration is crucial for Catena-X to be able to guarantee

The battery accounts for about 40 percent of the value added of an EV. From 2026, a digital ‘Battery Passport’ will be mandatory for all newly purchased batteries in vehicles in Germany and Europe. The Battery Passport documents data that describes sustainability and accountability in the supply chain

complete data chains, and markets like China are highly relevant in this respect. There is definitely a lot of interest, as we can see from the large number of members growing around the world – Catena-X already has some Asian members, but also from the USA such as Ford or the chip manufacturer Wolfspeed.

How Catena-X works

Is there anything you lack that would help to make Catena-X even more successful?

The medium-term goal is for many users to exchange data via Catena-X and so generate added value. Our calculations show that this could be up to 275,000 users worldwide, although this is an ambitious

target. The second goal is to build an active developer community. At SAP, we are working on six use cases for this, from parts traceability to quality management to carbon footprint management, as are other partners, but this task should rest on many shoulders, including local ones.

This diagram illustrates the Catena-X structure. The aim is not to replace existing solutions, but to close or bridge gaps in order to develop the whole construct into a functioning data space. You don’t have to be a member of the association to take advantage of the offer; it is sufficient to register.

Source: SAP –Bild dient nur der

Source:

Catena-X Glossary

Data is the new oil. With Catena-X, the

In the automotive industry, AI is used to solve complex problems, make real-time decisions, develop autonomous driving systems and optimise production. AI is also deployed in Catena-X. The platform incorporates a range of technologies such as machine learning, predictive analytics and cognitive computing to analyse data, recognise patterns and gain insights from them.

technical terms.

Catena-X, Latin for ‘chain’, is a global initiative for the standardised exchange of data and information between companies in the automotive industry. The association ‘Catena-X Automotive Network e.V.’ was founded in May 2021. Catena-X has 144 members as per March 2023. The development consortium, funded by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection (BMWK), comprises 28 members – SAP also plays an important role. The participants are united by the vision of a data-driven value network of all players in the global automotive industry.

Gaia-X is a project by Europe for Europe. Companies, research institutions, associations, administrations and politics are working hand in hand to develop the next generation of secure data infrastructure. It has three pillars: the Gaia-X Association founded in Brussels in February 2021, the national Gaia-X Hubs and the Gaia-X Community. Catena-X is one of the first industrial lighthouse projects based on Gaia-X and its architecture and principles.

Cofinity-X Ten of the Catena-X partners founded the joint venture Cofinity-X, based in Cologne, in January 2023 –SAP is one of them. Among other things, the company runs an open marketplace for Catena-X applications, initially with a focus on Europe. It wants to accelerate the creation of continuous data chains that make material flows traceable end-to-end along the automotive value chain. Its goal is to be one of the first operating companies to offer products and services for secure data exchange within the framework of Catena-X.

Blockchain is the name for a special counterfeit-proof, secure database technology. Data is stored in blocks of transactions on a decentralised network of computers. The use of cryptographic algorithms and decentralisation ensures that the integrity and authenticity of the data are guaranteed and that no changes or manipulations can be carried out by third parties. Blockchain technology is used in Catena-X applications for the secure, transparent storage of information and data and the exchange thereof with all partners along the automotive value chain.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) refers to how machines and computer systems can develop human-like intelligence.

Data sovereignty The concept of data sovereignty refers to a person’s control and supreme authority over their own data. In the context of Catena-X, data sovereignty means that the companies and players involved can exchange, process and use their own data in a trustworthy, secure environment without it being stored in a centralised database. This allows companies to manage their data in accordance with their own privacy and security standards, while having the freedom to collaborate with other players in the network.

Carbon footprint The carbon footprint is a measure of the amount of carbon dioxide (CO 2) produced by someone or something, such as an individual, a company, a country or a specific activity. The higher the carbon footprint, the higher the contribution to global warming and the greater the burden placed on the environment. Companies generally calculate their carbon footprint on the basis of measurements, empirical values and assumptions. For individual products, the industry average is often used and summed up over the added value. No uniform procedure has been defined, and the depth of detail varies in complexity from one product to the next. This is something Catena-X wants to change. It envisages standardised measurements along the value chain that will document real-world carbon emissions data and make them comparable and transparent within the automotive industry.

Circular economy Catena-X is working with renowned companies to collect the information relevant to the circular economy in a data ecosystem. This is done by creating a digital twin of each product (Editor’s note: These are virtual representations of a physical object or system) – across all industries throughout the entire value chain. Along with materials traceability, manufacturers can use the digital twin to collect and analyse usage data for maintenance purposes or on the condition of batteries, for example. This improves the circularity of materials. As a secondary marketplace, the Encore by SAP solution provides a platform that makes it easier to buy and sell secondary materials and used components. This makes the circular economy reality.

Parts traceability The traceability of materials and parts has been mandatory since the beginning of 2023 in the new Supply Chain Due Diligence Act (German: LkSG), which is why we are seeing the first use cases of Catena-X here. Parts Traceability by SAP makes it possible to trace defective parts or audit the carbon footprint. The topic of parts traceability serves as the basis for the digital mapping of further processes. Examples of this in practice are the tracking of serial numbers or faster recalls.

Text: Andrea Weller / Photo: Getty Images

automotive sector is making a quantum leap in digital networking towards a sustainable and transparent supply chain. MO/OVE explains the most important

Making green transparent

How green an electric car actually is on the road is primarily determined by how the electricity that propels it is generated. A project by SAP and other partners is shedding light on the origin and carbon footprint of the charged electricity.

Text: Dirk Gulde

Photos: SAP

Source: EUPD Research (2021)/BNetzA (2021)

Source: Digital Hub Mobility by UnternehmerTUM

Fluctuating carbon emissions in electricity generation

The black curve on the left symbolises the carbon content of a kilowatt hour generated over the course of a day. The figures differ enormously depending on the mix of power plants used to generate electricity. The amount of solar power (green curve) also varies considerably, meaning that the time at which an EV is charged has a huge impact on the carbon emissions figure.

charging transparent

Greener charging with electricity from different sources

Sustainability analyses and reports

The illustration on the left shows a sample application of Trusted Green Charging. A big photovoltaic system is installed on the roof of a company building. One use of the energy generated is to charge vehicles belonging to the employees, supplemented by electricity from the grid. The electricity meter records the number of kilowatt hours from each source, to later calculate the the amount of CO2 produced. Security chips in the electricity meter and blockchain technology for data exchange ensure forgery-proof analyses from which automated sustainability reports can be created.

An electric vehicle is only as clean as the electricity it runs on.” EV owners know this saying only too well. But how green is the electricity that an EV fills its battery with when charging? As things stand, this question can mostly only be answered very approximately using average values: electricity generation in Germany produced an average of 485 grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour (kWh) in 2021, while in other countries the values can be significantly higher or lower.

At the same time, the individual carbon footprint of an EV can deviate widely from such ap-

proximate average values: if the battery is often charged from a photovoltaic system set up by the employer on the roof of their office buildings, for example, the result is very different. And for the remainder of the electricity taken from the grid, the time of day or the wind and sunshine in the respective region determine the carbon content of the charged kilowatt hour to a considerable degree. Not even a green electricity contract is a guarantee that green electricity will always flow. A person who plugs in their EV only at times when there is a lot of renewable electricity will drive much

SAP E-Mobility with customer front end Blockchain technology for data infrastructure

‘greener’ than someone who always starts the charging process at the same time out of sheer habit.

In order to arrive at realistic values, the software specialists from SAP are participating in the Trusted Green Charging project of the Digital Hub Mobility of UnternehmerTUM, Europe’s largest centre for startups and innovation, in which network operators, chip and wallbox manufacturers or electricity producers are also taking part. The aim is to use information about real carbon values for the charging process to ensure that the greenest possible electricity flows into the battery. It should also be possible to create sustainability reports automatically based on the values. The EU will require such reports from 2024 for companies above a certain size; this affects 15,000 companies in Germany alone.

App to control charging processes

For Trusted Green Charging, SAP is contributing its SAP E-Mobility software, launched in 2021, which was developed to control charging stations and wallboxes. As it is based on the widely used Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP), it is already used by many charge point operators and is not dependent on specific manufacturers’ hardware. As a cloud solution, it allows operators to control and monitor their charging infrastructure worldwide in a web browser.

In the Trusted Green Charging project, SAP is expanding the e-mobility software to include the carbon footprint of the charging current. The goal is to create a digital platform that enables EV driv-

Automated sustainability reports

ers to remotely start the charging process via their mobile device when the app tells them that abundant green electricity is available. At the end of a charging process, the precise CO2 value of the energy received can be displayed precisely and, above all, verifiably. This also allows the creation of incentives to use as much green electricity as possible – such as a discount on the price of the charged electricity.

But how does the system know how much CO2 is generated by each kilowatt hour? When using a private or company-owned photovoltaic system, this is quite simple to quantify. Energy experts assume around 50 grams of carbon per kilowatt hour produced, mainly for the construction and maintenance of the plant. But how much carbon is associated with the additional electricity that is taken from the grid? Bayernwerk Netz, the electricity grid operator involved in the project, is working on incorporating precise data on the power plant sources from which the electricity is generated and at what minute electricity is flowing with what carbon footprint.

Blockchain technology for high security

the system for its own workforce. From 2025, all company cars must be electric-powered

To create automated sustainability reports or generate payment transactions, strict security precautions are necessary. For this reason, a security chip from Infineon is integrated to secure digital machine identities (charging hardware, inverters, PV systems, etc.), which validates all data produced. Blockchain technology is used to assign a unique machine identity to hardware components in the charging process. This ensures that any component integrated in the system is actually what it claims to be, so that payment transactions can be made forgery-proof and carbon emissions logged reliably. With the result that an EV not only drives more cleanly, its owner can even prove it.

SAP also uses

In their browser or app, users of SAP E-Mobility can see which sources make up the charging current at any time, how high its CO2 share is and how many cars are currently charging or have charged at what charging current.

Source: SAP – Image for illustration purposes only

Looking to the future, the system will even include the complex area of public charging, i.e. fast chargers on motorways or charging stations in town. Besides electricity providers and manufacturers of fast chargers, many other players are involved in the charging infrastructure in public spaces: operators of charging stations, mobility providers who take care of charging cards and billing, or roaming partners who mediate between the players. EV drivers are all too well-acquainted with this complexity, because time and again hiccups in the interaction between the individual players mean that no electricity flows. SAP is able to map a complete and reliable end-to-end process for public charging that includes all relevant data – from energy generation to the battery of the electric vehicle.

With SAP EMobility, public charging can become much more reliable than in the past

Green urban transport

between nine and 23 dollars for cars, the Americans are hoping to get more and more people to leave their cars at home, mitigating both congestion and environmental pollution.

What is soon to be implemented in the American metropolis is already daily life in Brussels, Belgium. Here, the inner city area is part of a Low Emission Zone (LEZ), i.e. an eco-zone in which cars with high carbon emissions are not allowed to drive at all or only on payment of a fee.

Low Emission Zone with intelligent software solution

It doesn’t matter where you are – climate change makes it incumbent on all nations to lower emissions in urban areas. It’s not just up to electric mobility to put things right. Cities are increasingly turning to the further development of their public transport services.

To achieve this, one strategy is to adopt measures to cut carbon emissions in the centres. A recent example: New York. Here, the city toll, which was already decided back in 2019, is to be introduced within the next year. With the charge, which is to be

It was an obvious step for Brussels to go down this path: some 60 percent of drivers in the city were travelling less than five kilometres, and half of these people were alone in their car.

“However, the LEZ is more about people from outside driving into town less often or not at all,” SAP’s Carlos Fernández Scola explains. As a solutions expert, he supports cities in setting up intelligent environmental zones.

The SAP software solution behind the system (see box) is able to support authorities like those of the City of Brussels in every relevant aspect. To enter the LEZ, you have to register your car with the city

Brussels wants to use the Low Emission Zone to encourage people to think differently and switch from the car to the various forms of public transport

Text: Carina Belluomo / Photos: Adobe Stock, SAP, swa – Thomas Hosemann

In its public sector operations, SAP has set itself the goal of reducing carbon emissions as well as strengthening and proactively managing the use of public transport. The company is already actively helping cities here with its software and technology solutions.

Augsburg offers its residents not only bus and tram services, but also car and bike sharing as well as flexible ride sharing

‘Mobility as a service’ is already a reality in Augsburg, Bavaria

All mobility offerings in one smartphone app

and are issued a certificate linked to your registration number. This is then captured and checked by video cameras upon entry. Anyone who enters the LEZ without a permit is also logged by the cameras.

So the software also identifies anyone that is breaking the rules and simultaneously triggers the order to impose a fine. The recipient of the fine can pay it easily through the system. In addition, the city uses the software to request customer feedback on the service.

Getting people to rethink

By imposing charges, it is hoped that people will have an incentive to change their thinking. “But it’s hard to change people’s habits,” Fernández Scola observes. “And if you’re used to getting around by car, that’s a big change.” The most important thing is to work with the residents and involve them in the changes, he adds.

Apart from that, policies like the LEZ are also intended to motivate people to use public transport.

SAP software solution for environmental zones in cities

The goal: to reduce emissions in urban areas by allowing only electric or low-emission vehicles. The city administration assigns different categories to different cars depending on their carbon emissions level and determines which vehicles are allowed to enter the low emission zone and when. This reduces congestion in city centres, which it is hoped will improve air quality and make citizens happier.

Because according to the City of Brussels, there are 1001 ways to get around within the city – without a car.

This is a view shared by Senta Belay, Solution Manager at SAP in the Rail, Transit and Mobility Solutions division: “E-mobility is a very good answer to emissions in cities, but not such a good one with respect to congestion.” However, to tackle the problem, not everyone should be using a single means of transport, he notes. The key is a combination of various forms of transport, be it car sharing, ride sharing or bus and train – which is the ‘mobility as a service’ approach, in which SAP helps cities with its software.

The aim is for mobility to be quickly and easily accessible to everyone – and all in an app with a single user account via which every form of mobility can be billed

This means combining all the mobility services in a city in one app, thus making it easier for people to access and pay for them – and, no less important, for cities to manage them. “When the customer starts a journey, the backend system not only has to manage the customer account,” Belay explains. It also has to handle revenue distribution, billing and accounting for the various transport providers involved in the journey – irrespective of the combination of trains, buses or other ride-sharing services used by the traveller.

The successful integration of SAP software is demonstrated in the model adopted by Stadtwerke Augsburg (SWA). The third-largest city in the state of Bavaria offers car and ride sharing in addition to normal public transport, and in many cases the various subscriptions can already be combined.

According to Isabella von Aspern, who is responsible for the digital transformation at SWA, even though the car is deeply rooted in Augsburg’s culture, the public transport system is so well developed here that the need to own a car is less pronounced. There is strong demand for the car-sharing model, which provides not just for normal cars but also for seven-seaters, and it constitutes a major bonus, because it lets families do without a car altogether.

The driver registers his vehicle and is issued an emissions certificate

The city determines if car is compliant with LEZ rules

The fastest way to move forward. Together.

Get on board with SAP® Industry Network for Automotive – an open and secure ecosystem with solutions tailored to meet the needs of your industry. With SAP solutions, you can reach unparalleled levels of collaboration, transparency, and innovation across your value chain while streamlining operations, reducing risk, and achieving CO2 neutrality. Let’s move forward together.

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