The reverse trend for e-cars: the car market continues to sag

Reverse trend for e-cars
Car market continues to sag

At just under 2.6 million, the number of new car registrations will fall again in 2021. The main reason for this are delivery bottlenecks. In the case of electric cars, however, there is no sign of a break-in. Their share of new registrations increased by 83 percent compared to the previous year.

A good 2.62 million cars hit German roads last year. That was another ten percent less than in the already weak year 2020, according to the latest data from the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA). In December alone, the decrease in new registrations compared to the same month last year was around 27 percent. “Instead of a recovery after the onset of the Corona crisis, new registrations continued to fall,” said the President of the Association of International Motor Vehicle Manufacturers (VDIK), Reinhard Zirpel.

“Compared to the pre-crisis year 2019, we have a total of one million fewer new registrations.” At that time, around 3.6 million new cars were registered in Germany. The main reason for the sustained decline was delivery bottlenecks, especially for electronic components such as semiconductors. “The customers wanted to step on the gas and buy more cars. But the manufacturers could only partially deliver because of the production bottlenecks,” said Zirpel.

However, the decline could hardly affect the boom in electric cars. According to KBA, almost 356,000 of the 2.62 million new vehicles were fully electric. That was around 83 percent more than in 2020 and corresponds to a share of new vehicle registrations of around 13.6 percent. According to KBA, hybrid drives had a share of almost 29 percent. Their new registrations increased by 43 percent to almost 754,600.

From the point of view of environmentalists, however, the high demand for battery vehicles and the lower number of new cars in the past year are only partially good news for the climate. “Nobody should confuse the reduced number of new registrations due to the lack of chips and economic uncertainties with a success of the mobility transition,” emphasized Greenpeace traffic expert Tobias Austrup. “Although the number of e-cars is growing significantly, saying goodbye to the climate-damaging combustion engine is still far from being fast enough.” Greenpeace is also critical of the high growth in hybrid vehicles. “Most of these cars are hardly ever driven electrically and accordingly emit far more greenhouse gases than the manufacturers want us to believe,” said Austrup.

Share of SUVs increased

In addition, the share of SUVs in all new registrations also increased significantly in the past year. According to KBA, more than every fourth new car was an SUV last year. In the previous year it was more than one in five. In order to further stimulate the demand for electric cars, the new federal government wants to concentrate more on promoting e-vehicles and expanding the charging infrastructure.

However, the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) also warns against viewing all-electric cars as a panacea. “A sustainable transport turnaround will only succeed if the focus is also placed on avoidance and relocation,” said an earlier study by the UBA on the environmental friendliness of electric cars. “This also corresponds to the image of a city that is worth living in, with attractive local public transport, more bicycle and foot traffic and short distances between work, living and supply.” The UBA recommends a stock of around 16 million e-vehicles by 2030 in order to achieve the climate targets. “This also includes strengthening the environmental network and thus reducing car traffic overall.”

Meanwhile, the VDIK assumes that the car market will recover in the year that has just started. At the beginning of December, the association expected around three million new cars for the year 2022 – an increase of 15 percent compared to the previous year. The prerequisite, however, is that the delivery bottlenecks normalize and the very high order backlogs at the manufacturers can be processed. The consulting firm EY thinks this is unlikely. “The shortage of chips will also cause significant production losses in 2022; the hoped-for market recovery is becoming more and more distant,” said EY on Wednesday on the basis of its own analysis of the German new car market.

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