Registrations: More E-cars than last year - but still not enough

The number of new passenger car registrations in January 2024 was 213,553 units according to the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA), which is an increase of 19.1% compared to the previous year's figure. With 22,474 new battery-electric powered passenger cars, 23.9% more vehicles were registered than in January 2023. However, the German Federation for Motor Trades and Repairs (ZDK) does not see this as a positive sign.

"The significant increase is misleading about the real situation in the car trade. A year ago, we had an extremely poor January because many registrations of electric vehicles were brought forward due to the reduced subsidies starting on 1 January 2023. Therefore, this special effect is not a signal for a turnaround. The order quotas remain at the low level of the previous year," says ZDK President Arne Joswig.

A year ago, this value was about one-third below the January 2022 level. The ZDK expects a total of around 2.65 million new passenger car registrations this year. The used car market showed improvement in January. With 527,258 ownership transfers, the value was 7.5% higher than the previous year's figure.

SUVs and Mini-Vans Boom

When looking at the segments, according to the KBA, the positive development was particularly evident in Mini-Vans with an increase of 161.3 percent. Their share was 0.8 percent. The largest segment, SUVs, with a share of 28.0 percent, achieved an increase of 23.8 percent. The compact class achieved a share of 20.2 percent with an increase of 52.7 percent, making it the second strongest segment ahead of off-road vehicles (13.4%/+13.0%), small cars (11.5%/+15.3%), the mid-range (9.2%/+7.6%), minis (3.6%/+0.9%), and the upper mid-range (2.6%/+9.8%). The segments upper class (0.9%/-22.8%), utilities (3.8%/-11.5%), sports cars (1.1%/-6.2%), motorhomes (1.7%/-5.9%), and large vans (2.5%/-0.2%) were behind the result of the previous year’s month.