Car production in the red at year’s beginning

In January, domestic passenger car production reached a volume of 312,100 units. That was 4% less than in the same month last year. In January of this year, production was 16% below the previous value compared to the pre-crisis year of 2019.

Exports rose in the past month: 227,800 brand-new cars were exported from production facilities in Germany in January, an increase of 2% compared to the same month last year. But exports in January were also still 21% below the pre-crisis level in 2019.

Compared to the same month last year, the same number of domestic orders were registered in the first month of this year (±0%). Foreign orders received in January, however, were 20% above the previous year's level. This means that a total of 18% more orders were registered last month than in January of the previous year.

In January 2024, almost a fifth more new registrations were filed on the German car market than in the same month last year. Compared to January 2023, the number of car registrations rose by 19% to a volume of 213,600 units. However, the clearly positive growth rate at the start of the year is overstated by a special effect on the German market. As a result of the change in the funding of electric cars at the turn of the year 2022/2023, new registrations were brought forward in the fourth quarter of 2022. Due to this special effect, sales at the start of 2023 were extremely weak, especially in the electric segment. This base effect, triggered by the low previous year's values, determines the high growth in January 2024.

The current number of new registrations is also put into perspective by looking at the pre-crisis level of 2019, from which the German car market is still well away: In January 2019, new car registrations in Germany were almost 20% higher than in the previous month.

A total of 36,900 new electric vehicles were registered in January. Despite this low volume, an increase of almost 37% was achieved compared to the same month last year. The background to this is the already mentioned weak previous year's figures and the associated base effect. This is particularly true with regard to plug-in hybrids (PHEV). In the past month, new BEV registrations rose by 24% to 22,500 units, while new PHEV registrations increased by almost 63% to 14,440 units. To put things into perspective: For the full year 2024, the VDA expects sales of 451,000 BEVs (-14% compared to 2023) and 185,000 PHEVs (+5% compared to 2023).