The boom of SUVs and off-road vehicles in Germany continues: In 2019, more than one million of these vehicles will be registered for the first time in one year. Already in November, the brand was cracked with 1.03 million vehicles since the beginning of the year, as figures from the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) in Flensburg shows. That's 18 percent more than in the same period last year.
Together, SUVs (Sport Utility Vehicles) and off-road vehicles account for nearly one third of all new car registrations in Germany, with just under 31 percent market share. In the current year, they are the two fastest-growing segments in KBA statistics.
Video: How harmful are SUVs?
Arne Kulf / Der Spiegel
"The fast pace of SUV sales will continue in the next few years," forecasts industry expert Ferdinand Dudenhöffer. "A trend reversal is not recognizable, as shown by the comparison with other car markets." Dudenhöffer defines the term SUV differently than the KBA. Roughly speaking, for him are the SUVs and off-road vehicles of the official Flensburg statistics plus some additional vehicles and variants, so that he comes to about five percent higher numbers. The tendency is the same.
"If the SUV segment continues to grow at the high pace of the past ten years, more than 50 percent of new cars will be SUVs by 2025," forecasts Dudenhöffer. Even with lower growth, he expects this figure for the year 2030.
Find out more about how dangerous SUVs are in road traffic and for the climate here. And an interview with an automotive designer about the SUV trend, you can read here. He says, among other things: "I do not want to exclude that men are concerned with extending their physical condition in the sense of a prosthesis."
