Driving in Ludwigsburg

Germany: 1 scheme to know about before you drive in.

The short answer for Ludwigsburg

Ludwigsburg has one driving restriction on our books: the Regionale Umweltzone „Ludwigsburg und Umgebung" — Maßnahme M 1 der… (low emission zone). What is a low emission zone?

What it means for your car

Petrol or LPG. A green Umweltplakette, and nothing beyond it. There is no second question here: the plan bans pollutant groups 1, 2 and 3 and leaves group 4 free, and the Land states the present-day position for every Umweltzone in Baden-Württemberg — "Für alle Umweltzonen in Baden-Württemberg gilt inzwischen, dass nur noch Fahrzeuge mit einer grünen Plakette in ihnen fahren dürfen" — and that red and yellow are banned as well. What the sticker maps to in Euro terms is set federally in the 35. BImSchV, and this corpus holds that separately as Germany's national requirement rather than restating it per city. Two points from the Land's own guidance catch people out and apply here exactly as they do in Stuttgart. A petrol car with a regulated catalytic converter gets the green sticker on emissions key numbers 01, 02 and 77, and in Baden-Württemberg also on 03 by ministerial decree, while 04, 09 and 11 need an individual exemption. And an electric car is not exempt from the sticker: "Um eine Umweltzone befahren zu dürfen, benötigen alle Fahrzeuge, auch Elektrofahrzeuge eine grüne Umweltplakette." Natural-gas vehicles are treated as petrol. Motorcycles, three-wheelers, working machines and agricultural tractors need no sticker at all.
Diesel. The same green Umweltplakette, and — this is the difference from Stuttgart that matters most on a route through Baden-Württemberg — nothing on top of it. No source read for this record states a diesel ban in the regional zone Ludwigsburg und Umgebung. The plan's measure is the sticker stage, the Land's page states the sticker rule for the Land as a whole, and the 3. Fortschreibung of 2022 adds inflow control, a speed limit, filter columns, bus lanes and parking management on the Schlossstraße — traffic measures, not a diesel threshold. So a diesel that carries the green sticker may drive here, including a Euro 4 diesel that would be turned away 15 kilometres south in Stuttgart, where a separate zonal ban reaches Euro 4/IV and worse across the whole city and Euro 5/V and worse in the middle of it. ⚠️ That asymmetry is the trap on this corridor, and it runs in one direction only: satisfying Ludwigsburg does not satisfy Stuttgart. It is recorded here as the absence of a further rule rather than as a permission, because the publishers state the sticker and stop; if the Regierungspräsidium adds a diesel measure in a later Fortschreibung, this field is where it will show, and the plan index is watched for exactly that.

Sources last read on 2026-09-18, from the authorities' own pages. The next scheduled check is 2027-03-18.

The schemes, one by one

• Regionale Umweltzone „Ludwigsburg und Umgebung" — Maßnahme M 1 der… Low emission zone

  This is one zone across ten municipalities, and the ten are named. The Regierungspräsidium Stuttgart did something here it did nothing like in Stuttgart itself: rather than draw a cordon around a city, it took the separate Umweltzonen that had grown up around Ludwigsburg and welded them, plus two towns that had never been in one, into a single regional zone.

  Its own sentence lists the members — the zone "aus den Kommunen Ludwigsburg, Kornwestheim, Möglingen, Markgröningen, Asperg, Tamm, Bietigheim-Bissingen, Ingersheim, Pleidelsheim und Freiberg a.N. besteht" — and the reason is stated as plainly: "Aus den bestehenden Umweltzonen rund um Ludwigsburg wird somit eine einzige ausgedehnte, regionale Umweltzone entwickelt." What it asks of a driver is the simplest question in the German system and the answer has been the same since 1 January 2013: the green Umweltplakette, pollutant group 4, and nothing less.

  The plan sets it out as a year-round ban on pollutant groups 1, 2 and 3 — "d.h.

  Kraftfahrzeuge mit grüner Plakette frei" — and the Land's transport ministry states the present-day position for the whole of Baden-Württemberg in one line: "Für alle Umweltzonen in Baden-Württemberg gilt inzwischen, dass nur noch Fahrzeuge mit einer grünen Plakette in ihnen fahren dürfen." Red and yellow stickers are not enough anywhere in the Land. Two things are worth knowing about where this zone stands today.

  It is one of only two Umweltzonen left in the whole Regierungsbezirk Stuttgart: the Regierungspräsidium abolished four in May 2023 and four more in January 2024, and writes in the present tense that "Im Regierungsbezirk Stuttgart gibt es aktuell nur noch die Umweltzonen in Ludwigsburg und Umgebung sowie in Stuttgart." And the plan behind it is still being written — the third Fortschreibung, published in 2022, adds inflow control, a speed reduction, filter columns, bus lanes and parking management on the Schlossstraße, and abolishes nothing.

  Unlike Stuttgart, there is no diesel ban layered on top here: the sticker is the whole test.

Driving to Ludwigsburg?

Starting from

Check the route to Ludwigsburg

Lists the schemes on the road you would take, and when you would reach them.

Before you set off

Germany also has a national requirement

• Plakette nach der 35. BImSchV (Umweltplakette)Motor vehicles of categories M and N as defined in Annex II A of Directive 70/156/EEC — that is, passenger vehicles and goods vehicles. Stickers exist for pollutant groups 2, 3 and 4; group 1, the most polluting, gets no sticker.

This is owed on the country's roads, not inside this scheme. What Germany asks, with the source

Other cities in Germany

• Stuttgartabout 14 km away, 2 verified schemes
• Munichabout 192 km away, 1 verified scheme
• Berlinabout 499 km away, 1 verified scheme