Car density at a record high: the trend is toward second and third cars

Created: 09/16/2022, 17:30

By: Sebastian Oppenheimer

There is hardly any sign of a traffic turnaround in Germany: over the past ten years, the number of cars has increased continuously.

Driving a car has never been a really cheap pleasure - but especially in the last few months, car owners have had to show mental strength when it comes to the pump: fuel prices have risen to dizzying heights, so even the controversial "tank discount" could bring little relief .

There are clear regional differences in price: According to the Cartel Office, petrol and diesel are the most expensive in Bavaria.

But e-car drivers are not doing much better: Electricity prices have also risen sharply – and free charging is now history at Lidl and Kaufland.

But is that why people say goodbye to cars so quickly?

According to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), the number of cars in Germany has increased significantly over the past ten years - and has even grown faster than the population.

The number of cars in Germany has increased over the past ten years.

(Iconic image) © Gottfried Czepluch/Imago

Car density at a record high: the trend is toward second and third cars

While there were still 517 cars per 1,000 inhabitants in 2011, ten years later, in 2021, there were already 580 cars per 1,000 inhabitants.

There are regional differences in car density: Saarland (658), Rhineland-Palatinate (632) and Bavaria (622) have the most cars per 1,000 inhabitants.

The city states of Berlin (337), Hamburg (435) and Bremen have the lowest car density.

Car density also increased across Europe: Luxembourg (682), Italy (670) and Poland (664) have the most cars in relation to the population – the fewest in Romania (379), Latvia (390) and Hungary (403 ).

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Car density at a record high: 48.5 million cars registered in Germany at the beginning of the year

The number of registered cars in Germany is at a record high: According to the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA), 48.5 million cars were registered as of January 1, 2022.

According to the Federal Statistical Office, the trend over the past ten years has been towards a second or third car.

The proportion of households that own at least one car hardly changed from 2011 (77.9 percent) to 2021 (77.0 percent).

However, in the same period, the proportion of households with two cars rose from 23.4 to 27.0 percent and the proportion of households with three or more cars even rose from 3.7 to 6.1 percent.

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Car density at a record high: traffic researchers call for drastic measures

The number of electric cars on the roads is slowly increasing: According to the KBA, 13.6 percent of the vehicles newly registered between January and July 2022 were pure electric vehicles.

Overall, however, the number of e-cars is still low: At the beginning of 2022, only 1.3 percent of the passenger cars registered in Germany were electric vehicles.

So there is still little sign of a real turnaround in traffic.

A German traffic researcher had therefore called for drastic measures: driving a car had to become "financially unattractive".

However, many people depend on cars, for example to get to work - and families also find it difficult to do without them completely, as a recent experiment in Hamburg showed.