The ramp-up of e-mobility continues in Germany

For the German passenger car market, 2022 marks the year in which e-mobility has established itself. The gradual switch from internal combustion to electric drive, which is CO2-neutral when charged with renewable electricity during use, necessitated by climate targets, has gained further momentum.With 833,000 electric cars (+22 percent), 31 percent of all new registrations were for electrically powered vehicles. By comparison, diesel (including mild hybrids) only achieved a share of 24 percent. The growth drivers were the purely electrically powered passenger cars (BEV, +32 percent). Plug-in hybrids (PHEV) also developed positively (+11 percent). The environmental bonus, which expired at the end of the year for PHEVs and was cut for BEVs, also contributed to this further growth following the record year of 2021, leading to purchases being brought forward. In total, over 1.865 million applications for the environmental bonus had been received by the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control by the end of 2022. BEVs accounted for 57 percent of the applications.

The most important owner group in the electric car market in 2022 was private owners, with 43 percent, ahead of company cars, which accounted for 35 percent of new e-vehicle registrations. These two groups thus have an above-average presence in the electric market. In addition to the environmental bonus, another incentive is the reduced taxation of private use in company cars, which makes electric cars attractive in the commercial sector as well.

A striking feature of the segment analysis is the significantly higher share of e-cars in the subcompact class (9 percent) compared with the market as a whole (5 percent).

German manufacturers were able to defend their strong position in the domestic electric car market in 2022 with a market share of 56 percent.They now offer over 90 different models in all major segments.In the ranking of the most registered electric models, five of the top 10 models are accounted for by German group brands. 

On January 1, 2023, the e-car fleet including PHEVs reached 1.88 million vehicles.Of these, more than 1 million were already purely electrically powered passenger cars.The German manufacturers made a significant contribution to this result.In terms of the total vehicle population, the share of electric vehicles is around 4 percent. As you can see, we still have a long way to go before we can decarbonize passenger car traffic.