Düsseldorf · Essen · Dortmund
Every Mietwagen (private hire car) operator in Düsseldorf, Essen and Dortmund must follow the return-to-base duty in § 49(4) PBefG and keep a one-year record of every order. Minimum fares are set city by city: Essen has one (taxi tariff minus 7 %, partly suspended by a court), Dortmund plans one. Blocking an inspection can cost you your licence, as Düsseldorf showed in 2024.
Rheinflotte puts all Uber and Bolt trips of your 6 to 50 cars in one view, flags idle time without a follow-up order and warns you before deadlines run out, so you have records to show when the inspectors call.
Get a free assessment for your fleetLast updated: 27 October 2026
North Rhine-Westphalia has no statewide minimum fare. § 51a PBefG (the Passenger Transport Act) lets each licensing authority set a Mindestbeförderungsentgelt, a minimum fare that may not be undercut, for its own district. Here is where the three big Rhine and Ruhr cities stand:
State capital, permits issued by the city
Sources: decision (NRWE) · court press release
General order of 13 Oct 2025
Sources: decision (NRWE) · court press release
Revised plan, press release of 8 June 2026
Source: City of Dortmund press release
Cologne has its own rules set by the City of Cologne; they are not covered here. Whether Essen or Dortmund have changed their rules since, only the city itself can confirm.
The core rules are federal law, set out in § 49(4) PBefG, so they apply in Düsseldorf just as in Essen or Dortmund:
“After carrying out the order, the Mietwagen must return to its base without delay …”
§ 49(4) sentence 3 PBefG (our translation)
Germany's Federal Court of Justice confirmed this on 3 June 2026 (I ZR 123/25). A subcontractor's Uber X car stood at Cologne's Breslauer Platz from 10:10 to 10:22 after a drop-off. That was a breach, and the company that hired the subcontractor was liable too. The court saw no constitutional problem with the rule.
Waiting at hotspots such as the airport, the main station or the Altstadt without a new order is a breach, even when the app shows the car as available.
The authority must revoke a licence (the Konzession) when conditions such as the operator's reliability are no longer met. Repeated breaches of duties under the PBefG are named as a typical sign of unreliability (§ 25(1) PBefG).
Düsseldorf shows how quickly this can happen. Two linked companies, which drove partly via Uber, refused to let city staff into their offices during two announced inspections and handed over no records. The Düsseldorf administrative court called this a serious breach. 47 permits were gone and the business had to stop at once.
Four deadlines decide whether a car may drive. With 20 cars and 30 drivers that easily adds up to more than a hundred dates a year.
| Deadline | Rule | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Licence (Konzession) | valid for 5 years at most | § 16(4) PBefG |
| Vehicle inspection (HU) | every 12 months for cars carrying passengers under the PBefG | StVZO Annex VIII no. 2.1.2.2 |
| Driver's passenger permit (P-Schein) | 5 years at most, renewable on application | § 48(5) FeV |
| Order records | keep for 1 year | § 49(4) PBefG |
Without software, someone in the office compares trip lists from two platforms against the base, looks for follow-up orders and keeps expiry dates in a spreadsheet. It eats time, and gaps often show up only during an inspection.
Then there is the pricing risk: where a city sets a minimum fare, you need to know which trips fell below it and what each car still earns afterwards.
Assumptions chosen for illustration, not measured values.
Rheinflotte connects your Uber Fleet and Bolt Fleet accounts and brings every trip, driver and car into one view. For Düsseldorf and the Ruhr, five features matter most:
Idle time without a follow-up order shows up per car as an alert, before an inspector finds it.
Uber and Bolt together, per driver and per car, instead of two exports side by side.
Licence, HU inspection, insurance and P-Schein, with a reminder before a car has to stay parked.
Net of platform commission, per car and per driver, so you can see what a minimum fare means for your fleet.
Orders and ride requests go from your office to the drivers, and every hand-off stays traceable.
Fictional data for illustration.
Setup takes about 48 hours.
Upload your cars and drivers, including expiry dates for licences, inspections and driver permits.
Link your fleet accounts. Trips then appear automatically in one view.
See revenue per car and driver, cost per kilometre, idle time and upcoming deadlines.
The software behind Rheinflotte runs at Mietwagen and taxi companies across Germany.
from $5.99 per driver/month
Mainly the return-to-base duty and order records under § 49(4) PBefG: a Mietwagen may only carry out orders received at the operator's base or home, and must return to base without delay unless it has a new order. Every order received must be kept on record for one year. You also have to allow inspections: in 2024 the Düsseldorf administrative court upheld the revocation of 47 permits because two companies refused inspections.
Not statewide. § 51a PBefG lets each licensing authority set minimum fares for Mietwagen in its own district. In NRW, Essen has issued such an order and Dortmund presented a revised plan in June 2026. What counts is each city's own rule and its scope.
Only partly. Essen's general order of 13 October 2025 sets the minimum at the base and per-kilometre price of the Essen taxi tariff minus 7 percent. On 1 April 2026 the Gelsenkirchen administrative court (7 L 141/26) suspended it for two applicants because the amount was not defined clearly enough. The decision covers only those two and was not final.
No start date had been officially confirmed. According to the City of Dortmund's press release of 8 June 2026, the revised plan was going through the council and would take effect on 1 September 2026 if approved. It would cover only trips entirely within the city, excluding health-insurance patient transport and orders received at least one hour before the trip.
Yes. On 3 June 2026 Germany's Federal Court of Justice (BGH, I ZR 123/25) confirmed the duty under § 49(4) PBefG for Mietwagen trips booked via Uber X. It saw no serious constitutional doubts, and EU law did not apply because there was no cross-border element. The company was also liable for its subcontractor's breach.
No, not without a new order. Under § 49(4) sentence 3 PBefG the car must return to base without delay after a trip unless it received a new order before or during that trip. In the BGH case, a car waited twelve minutes at Cologne's Breslauer Platz after dropping off a passenger, and that was a breach.
The authority must revoke it when the licensing conditions, such as the operator's reliability, are no longer met (§ 25(1) PBefG). An operator is considered unreliable in particular if they repeatedly breach duties under the PBefG. In Düsseldorf in 2024, blocking two announced inspections was enough.
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