Over 1.4 million electric cars on German roads

The near 40% rise builds on earlier data from July last year when 1.17 million electric cars were already registered in Germany. In addition, KBA received listings for 326,000 new electric vehicles between July and December making for the over 1.4 million BEVS in the fleet at the beginning of this year.

While battery-electric cars recorded an increase of 39.1 per cent, plug-in hybrids only grew by 6.6 per cent. Their number rose from 864,712 (1 January 2023) to 921,886 (1 January 2024). Hybrids totalled 1,989,376 units; KBA does not provide figures for fuel cell vehicles.

Even if the growth in electric cars is apparent, around 44 million passenger cars (excluding PHEVs and HEVs) in Germany are still powered by fossil fuels. Their number is declining slightly, also reflected in the market share of new registrations: petrol cars fell by 1.1 per cent and diesel cars by 2 per cent. Natural gas (-4.0 per cent) and LPG drives (-4 per cent) also declined.

It will now be interesting to see how future registration will reflect the end of the subsidy programme, which will run out this December. Figures for the first month of this year saw 22,474 new EV registrations, corresponding to a 10.5% overall market share. By comparison, the average for 2023 was 18.4 per cent.

The discontinuation of the environmental bonus will remain the same for tradespeople. In this respect, there should be a fixed sales base for BEVs supported by the economy. However, it cannot be ruled out that registrations of battery-electric cars will develop with a one-year delay, similar to the plug-in hybrid curve of 2023. Falling prices for electric cars could counteract this. And these are already on the horizon.

Notably, many models have van and car variants. However, these types are usually registered as lorries and are therefore not counted as car registrations.

kba.de (in German)