Export as the strongest driver
Automobile association expects e-car record
4/16/2023, 4:49 p.m
More electric cars are expected to be built in Germany this year than ever before. This has to do with increasing production capacities and demand from abroad – because domestically it is weakening.
The Association of the German Automobile Industry (VDA) expects a new record in the construction of electric cars this year. “We assume that the domestic production of electrically powered cars will increase by 50 percent to 1.33 million units, of which 980,000 will be purely battery-electric cars,” said VDA boss Hildegard Müller to the industry journal “Automobilwoche”. In 2022, 885,000 electric cars rolled off the assembly line in Germany, 300,000 of them plug-in hybrids.
The production of purely battery-electric cars has increased by 68 percent compared to the previous year, as reported by “Automobilwoche”. Around three out of four electric cars manufactured in Germany are therefore purely electrically powered. The production of plug-in hybrids, on the other hand, will fall by 50,000 units.
The reasons for ramping up the production of electric cars are production facilities with increasing production, such as at Tesla in Grünheide or Mercedes-Benz in Bremen, as well as new e-models. According to Müller, the “demand-side driver” is exports. “On the other hand, there is less impetus from Germany because of the partial reduction in funding at the beginning of the year.” According to the VDA, a total of around 3.4 million cars were produced in Germany in 2022, almost eleven percent more than in 2021 – but still 26 percent less than before the corona pandemic.
New registrations of e-cars declining
After an extremely strong December, new registrations of electric cars had dropped sharply at the beginning of the year. One of the reasons for this is the capping of state funding. Experts have therefore already forecast a significant decline in new electric vehicles for the current year. VDA boss Müller said in February that the association expects sales of 510,000 vehicles for purely electric cars – a drop of eight percent compared to the previous year. For plug-in hybrids, she assumes a decline of 30 percent to 255,000 cars sold.
Data from the online portal Carwow indicate that comparatively weak new registration figures for electric cars can also be expected for the coming months. For several months, the company has seen a significantly lower proportion of electric vehicles in the vehicle configurations on its website. In the first quarter it was around a quarter to a third lower than in the first three quarters of 2022.
The configurations don’t translate directly into vehicle orders, and Carwow customers don’t necessarily represent the average car buyer. Significant changes in configuration behavior are, however, a good indication of changed customer interest.