New passenger car registrations 2023: Electric cars only with a slight increase, hybrid sales halved

According to KBA and VDA, a good 2.84 million passenger cars were registered in Germany in 2023, an increase of around 7% compared to the previous year. Among them were 524,200 fully electric vehicles, which corresponds to only slight growth of approximately 11% compared to 2022. The sales of hybrid cars, on the other hand, saw a significant drop of a hefty 51% to just 175,700 units. The sales decline for hybrids was particularly strong in December 2023, with a 74% drop (17,890) compared to the same period last year. But pure electric vehicles also recorded a significant drop in registrations in the past month, down 48% to 54,650 vehicles. As a result, the sales losses of electrified passenger cars were significantly higher than those of the generally weak German overall market in December (down 23% to 241,900 units).

However, the year-end rush in 2022 was strongly influenced by the then reduction of the environmental bonus for battery electric vehicles and the complete discontinuation for plug-in hybrids. This led to a strong special effect at the end of the year, as customers brought forward car purchases to benefit from the still higher subsidies.

Due to the originally planned reduction of the environmental bonus, there was also a pre-purchasing effect at the end of 2023, which, however, had a less pronounced impact compared to the previous year. The abrupt end of the environmental bonus on December 17 will be reflected in new registrations especially in 2024.