Upcoming Toll Update Germany

[Bernd Welter]

Hi there,

recently I've been asked (by several independent parties) about the upcoming toll update for Germany which applies from 1.12.2023:

Currently, we're utilizing your service to acquire road taxes. However, it's no secret that these road taxes are scheduled to increase in Germany from 0.19 EUR/KM to 0.34 EUR/KM, starting from the 1st of December 2023. This presents a significant challenge for us, as we have to factor in these changes while calculating prices for future contracts, considering road taxes constitute a substantial part of the price.
Is there a possibility for us to input a contract start date into your service, and have your service calculate the future road taxes accordingly? I've noticed there's a field in your web application where we can input the departure date. However, when I attempted to set this to a future date, say 2024-02-02, the result remained the same as if I had input the current date. Could you provide some clarity on this?

And here's what you should know - based on xServer2 / Developer:

• Basically our routing engine is able to handle different tarif scenarios - as long as the required underlying data is up2date. Whenever we provide toll updates we communicate them throught the Developer Blog (as in this example) and if possible these updates are available before the new rates apply. Sometimes we have to wait for some official political announcements - in this case it can happen that we are delayed.
• For the upcoming toll update we also need to implement some new functionality in the routing engine itself because the tarif scheme is based on some new parameters, e.g. a "emission efficiency class" - this will be available in one of the next core xServer versions (e.g. v2.30 at the earliest)
• The API itself already offers access to so-called TimeConsiderationModes which enables users to specify how the engine is supposed to deal with time dependent data - whether it is daytime dependent speed patterns, live traffic data or toll data:
  • short term within a scenario (e.g. cheaper prices during the day)

    

    Example of short term price change: daytime dependent toll on the Brenner

  • long term with different scenarios

    

    Example of different time based tarrifs: increase of polish toll (change on 9.3.2023)

Stay tuned for further details,

Bernd

[Max Beermann]

Hey there,

Is there already an unofficial estimate of when the toll-data will be available in xServer internet? Or any unofficial news beyond that? I hope the questions are not annoying. But this is a very important topic, so I kindly ask for your understanding.

Best regards
Max

[Bernd Welter]

Hello Max,

I understand your impatience and therefore I asked my colleagues from different teams about any valuable info

• engine-wise
• data-wise
• cloud-wise

As soon as they return to me I'll forward their input to this thread.

Bernd

[Max Beermann]

Hi Bernd,

many thanks!

Best regards
Max

[Bernd Welter]

Latest response from Product Management:

xroute2 / detailed toll: not before october 2023

[agnes_molnar]

Hi Bernd,

Hope you are doing well. We still have not received a Germany toll update and even though we received the newest Europe Premium 2024.1H it still does not include it. Can you please give advice on when it will be available?

[Bernd Welter]

Hello Agnes,

from my understanding the 2024.1H "data" is still "to be prepared".
I will forward your post to product management and request a status / date of expected availability.

This is because the official tariffs have been finalized recently and we need to prepare the data.
Furthermore let me mention that the current v2.30 treats the new toll relevant co2EmissionClassEU within the vehicleProfile.Engine as experimental.

We might "release" this property in v2.31 but that's not decided yet.

Bernd

[Uwe Schuster]

Our toll tests for the December 2023 toll with the CO2 emission class 1 do PASS with our local xServer 2.30 installation with 2023.2 H and also with xServer 2 internet.

How do we get the expected values for CO2 emission class 2 till 5?

We use vehicle profiles like the following profile with Euro 6, 3 axles and weight 7.5 tons for our tests:

Code: Select all

	"vehicleProfile": {
		"engine": {
			"emissionStandardEU": "EURO_6"
		},
		"axle": {
			"numberOfAxles": 3
		},
		"weight": {
			"totalPermittedWeight": 7500,
			"emptyWeight": 0,
			"loadWeight": 0
		}
	}

For the CO2 emission classes we just added the "co2EmissionClassEU" in the engine object.

Code: Select all

		"engine": {
			"emissionStandardEU": "EURO_6",
			"co2EmissionClassEU": 5
		}

We do get different values for different CO2 emission classes, but they do not match the values mentioned for example at these locations:
- https://www.toll-collect.de/de/toll_col ... _2023.html
- https://www.svg.de/fileadmin/user_uploa ... 8.2023.pdf (from https://www.svg.de/maut/deutschland/mau ... 023#c22536)


How does our test work?

Calc the route from Berlin to Leipzig with a vehicle profile with a given emission class, axle count and weight, summarize the values of officialDistance and cost amount of all sections of the response and divide the price by distance.
(There is no real need to summarize all sections - just using the values of a bigger section will lead to the same result. I did this to avoid getting wrong results in case with CO2 emission class some (but not all) section distances or prices would be wrong.)

Some of the results without CO2 emission class are:

Code: Select all

URL    : https://xserver2-eu.cloud.ptvgroup.com
Maut DE 2023/12 7,50 t Euro-0/3 Achsen            : PASS  (Expected: 0,2770 Actual: 0,2769)
Maut DE 2023/12 7,50 t Euro-1/3 Achsen            : PASS  (Expected: 0,2770 Actual: 0,2769)
Maut DE 2023/12 7,50 t Euro-2/3 Achsen            : PASS  (Expected: 0,2760 Actual: 0,2762)
Maut DE 2023/12 7,50 t Euro-3/3 Achsen            : PASS  (Expected: 0,2510 Actual: 0,2512)
Maut DE 2023/12 7,50 t Euro-4/3 Achsen            : PASS  (Expected: 0,2220 Actual: 0,2218)
Maut DE 2023/12 7,50 t Euro-5/3 Achsen            : PASS  (Expected: 0,2060 Actual: 0,2057)
Maut DE 2023/12 7,50 t Euro-6/3 Achsen            : PASS  (Expected: 0,1780 Actual: 0,1782)

Some of the results with CO2 emission class are:

Code: Select all

URL    : https://xserver2-eu.cloud.ptvgroup.com
Maut DE 2023/12 7,50 t Euro-6/3 Achsen/CO2-1      : PASS  (Expected: 0,1780 Actual: 0,1782)
Maut DE 2023/12 7,50 t Euro-6/3 Achsen/CO2-2      : FAIL  (Expected: 0,1740 Actual: 0,1600)
Maut DE 2023/12 7,50 t Euro-6/3 Achsen/CO2-3      : FAIL  (Expected: 0,1700 Actual: 0,1562)
Maut DE 2023/12 7,50 t Euro-6/3 Achsen/CO2-4      : FAIL  (Expected: 0,1380 Actual: 0,1238)
Maut DE 2023/12 7,50 t Euro-6/3 Achsen/CO2-5      : FAIL  (Expected: 0,0000 Actual: 0,0843)

For the CO2 emission classes 2 till 5 there is no difference if "emissionStandardEU" is set to Euro-6 or if it is omitted.

The attached zip file contains the following:
- 2 x searchLocations Requests and Response for getting the coordinates of Berlin and Leipzig
- calculateRoute Request and Response for "Maut DE 2023/12 7,50 t Euro-6/3 Achsen"
- calculateRoute Request and Response for "Maut DE 2023/12 7,50 t Euro-6/3 Achsen/CO2-5"

The order of the files is by the timestamp prefix in the filename.

[Bernd Welter]

Hello Uwe,

with a server version v2.30 the CO2EmissionClass property of a
com.ptvgroup.xserver.vehicleprofile.Engine is flagged "experimental". So if you want to "override" the default value (1) through the API you need to use the experimental definition of the service.

Relation "Berlin to Leipzig" based on 6.12.2023 iterated over all possible combinations of "Euro class" x "CO2EmissionClass" : 40t

and for the 7.50t Truck (not the regular 7.49t)- just needed some minutes to add this into the client ;-)

Bernd

[Uwe Schuster]

Unfortunately your screenshots does not show a specific price and distance - so I have no idea if for example the price per kilometer for 40 t, 5 axles and CO2 emission class 3 is 33.2 cent per kilometer what both sources from my prior post tell me.

We already use experimental endpoint for the calculateRoute as shown in the attached requests files of my prior post.
It is impossible to use co2EmissionClassEU in the vehicle profile - using the default endpoint leads to the following response:

Code: Select all

{
  "faultInfo": {
    "$type": "InvalidValueFault",
    "hint": "Affects field 'co2EmissionClassEU' in 'Engine'.",
    "parameter": "/RouteRequest/requestProfile/vehicleProfile/engine/@co2EmissionClassEU"
  },
  "message": "Field 'co2EmissionClassEU' requires API version experimental but API version 2.30 is used."
}