The federal government has set itself the goal of putting 15 million electric cars on German roads by 2030. However, the number of new registrations shows that battery-powered vehicles are currently not popular.
Interest in new electric cars is currently low among potential buyers in Germany. Last month, 30,762 purely electric cars were newly registered – 36.8 percent fewer than in July 2023, according to the Federal Motor Transport Authority. The share of all new car registrations in Germany in July was 12.9 percent.
This confirms a trend. Sales of electric cars have been stagnating for months, and new registrations are significantly lower than last year. Since January, almost 215,000 electric cars have been registered in Germany, which corresponds to 12.6 percent of all new registrations. In the first seven months of last year, there were 268,926 electric cars, and the share of all new registrations was 16.4 percent.
Even new models do not improve demand
“Sales of electric cars are disappointing, electric cars are currently a slow seller,” says Constantin Gall from the EY consultancy about the new figures. There are still considerable reservations about electric cars among large parts of the population. “The high prices, the very limited range of affordable electric small cars, the falling prices of used electric cars are viewed just as critically as the range problem, long charging times and the patchy charging infrastructure,” explains Gall. Even new models with longer ranges and shorter charging times are currently not changing the poor demand trend.
The federal government has set the goal of having 15 million electric cars on the road in Germany by 2030. This goal currently seems almost impossible to achieve. According to the Federal Motor Transport Authority, as of January 1, 1.4 million purely electric cars were registered in Germany.
Number of all new registrations well below pre-pandemic level
A total of 238,263 new cars were registered in Germany in July, 2.1 percent fewer than in the same month last year. “There remains a large gap compared to the pre-crisis level: sales in July were 28 percent below the level of July 2019,” analyzes the EY consultancy. So far this year, almost 500,000 fewer new cars have been sold in Germany than in the same period in 2019.
The business climate in the automotive industry calculated by the Ifo Institute underscores the tense situation: In July, the indicator fell to minus 18.3 points after minus 9.5 points in June. This was reported by the Munich-based economic research institute. “The automotive industry is sliding further into crisis,” says automotive expert Anita Wölfl.
According to the report, car companies rate both their current situation and their expectations for the next three months as worse than in June. According to Ifo, plant capacity utilization has fallen to 77.7 percent, nine percentage points below the long-term average. Export expectations have also fallen sharply.
Source: Stern
