As of: March 6, 2024, 6:43 a.m
By: Patrick Freiwah
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The KBA statistics for new registrations show a clear trend for February: Sales in Germany are increasing, but this does not apply to electric cars.
Flensburg/Munich - After several years of Corona lull, the German new car market is slowly recovering.
The new KBA registrations in February 2024 illustrate the upward trend, with a decent increase recorded last month.
After the first two months of the year, the increase was 11.8 percent.
According to the new statistics from the Federal Motor Transport Authority in Flensburg, there were recently 217,388 new registrations, which means an increase of 5.4 percent compared to the same month last year.
However, it is important to add that February also had one more day this year (29).
Overall, the difference compared to the times before the pandemic is still large:
New KBA registrations below pre-Corona levels - electric cars are stagnating
The sales figures for new cars in this country are almost 19 percent lower.
The decline in electric cars is particularly noticeable: with 27,479 newly registered BEV models, this segment was well below the previous year.
E-cars only had a market share of 12.6 percent of the overall market - a year earlier this share was 13.5 percent.
“The market for electric cars has shifted into reverse gear,” explains Constantin Gall from the consulting firm EY.
Since the purchase premium for electric vehicles ended, new KBA registrations in this country have suffered a severe slump.
According to EY, the negative development will even worsen when the current price reductions for electric cars expire in April.
Cupra brand electric car charging: Sales of electric cars have been stagnating since the end of government funding (symbolic image).
© Snowfieldphotography/Imago
However, other experts believe that the lower electric car prices will continue beyond March 2024.
New registrations in Germany: Petrol engines extremely popular
By far the largest share of new car registrations is made up of models with combustion engines: petrol engines increased by 2.3 percent.
With a total of 77,106 vehicles (35.5 percent), this type of drive is the most popular. Diesel engines are far from being left behind either: diesel-powered cars are up a whopping 9.7 percent compared to the same month last year (42,153 models).
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The problem: As the KBA announced, CO2 emissions from newly registered cars rose by an average of 2.5 percent last month.
This stands in the way of ambitious plans to reduce emissions from new cars at EU level:
If the trend consolidates, according to Gall, it could lead to “massive problems” for manufacturers.
New, stricter CO2 targets will apply from 2025: “Stagnating or even declining sales of electric cars is actually not an option,” explains Gall.
Because then the car companies would face billions in fines.
In 2035 there is even a risk that combustion engines will be completely phased out.
Popular drive variants: Hybrid models with high growth
Hybrid models take second place among the most popular drive variants in Germany: 69,367 new cars had a combination of two energy sources in February 2024, with an impressive share of 31.9 percent.
That means an impressive increase of 17.6 percent, of which 14,575 are plug-in hybrids - i.e. models that also use electricity to charge.
With an increase of 22.3 percent, PHEV vehicles are the category that is currently experiencing the highest growth.
This plays into the hands of those advocates who do not see the mobile future as fully electric, but instead advocate the further development of combustion engines in parallel.
(PF with material from AFP)