Seat, Peugeot, Renault, Volvo, Nissan, Opel... The Government has acquired one hundred new official vehicles throughout the first ten months of 2022 to renew the fleet available to the Head of State, the Presidency of the Government or the different ministries . The objective is to move towards electrification, with environmentally sustainable cars and move towards the definitive elimination of diesel and gasoline.
As of October 31, the State mobile fleet was made up of 695 units, of which 527 have the environmental label of the General Directorate of Traffic (DGT), being one hundred percent hybrid or electric. In other words, there are barely 25% of cars considered polluting, according to data provided by the Ministry of Finance, responsible for the fleet of official vehicles.
With these additions, the fleet of official vehicles available to senior government officials increases its endowments. 2021 closed with a total of 638 vehicles, so between cancellations and registrations there are 57 cars as of October 31. At the end of last year, there were 427 hybrid and plug-in utility vehicles, which represented 67% of the total fleet.
The Government has spent several years betting on the renewal of official vehicles in line with its political commitment to move towards the electrification of the private fleet. Only in acquiring new cars, the Ministry directed by María Jesús Montero has invested more than 7 million euros in the last two years, an expense that remains in the Budgets in process in the Senate. The fleet also has an electric station in service with 74 charging points.
The Government recognizes that it is making an effort to renew the official fleet that is aging. Specifically, the average age of the vehicles exceeds ten years. During the economic crisis there was a decade in which no car was renewed.
Until the memory of this 2022 was known, the latest annual data on the fleet indicated that of the 638 official cars, most of them, some 200 are distributed among the different ministries. There are two jewels in the crown: the armored Audi A8 L W12 at the disposal of the President of the Government and which was acquired in 2017 (with Mariano Rajoy in La Moncloa) for 498,042.04 euros; and the armored Mercedes Benz S 600 available to the State Headquarters and which was purchased in 2019 for 549,945 euros.
The official fleet is made up of 41 armored vehicles, models of Mercedes, Audi, Peugeot or BMW, in which ministers and high State authorities travel, such as the president of Congress or the president of the CGPJ.
Most of the vehicles used by the ministries are already efficiently ecological, highlighting the Ford Mondeo hybrid (gasoline), the 145 Toyota Prius Hybrid (gasoline) and the 100% electric Renault Zoe zero label from the DGT. There are still polluting vehicles, such as the Peugeot 607, with more than 20 years of service, which are being gradually replaced.
According to the latest memory of the vehicle fleet, the official State cars traveled more than 6 million kilometers in 2021, with an average per vehicle in said year of 9,462 kilometers. They consumed a total of 409,460 liters of fuel, the average being 6.78 liters per 100 kilometres.
