New passenger car registrations down 10 percent in May

The German passenger car market declined by 10 percent in May compared to the same month last year. The Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) registered 207,200 new registrations. However, May 2022 had two more working days than the same month last year. Without this effect, the decline would have been much greater at 19 percent. In the first five months of 2022, around 1,013,400 new passenger cars were registered, which corresponds to a minus of 9 percent compared to the same period of the previous year. The market share of the VDIK members increased slightly to around 40 percent between January and May (previous year: 39 percent).

Reinhard Zirpel, President of the Association of International Motor Vehicle Manufacturers (VDIK), stated: “The downward trend in the German automotive market is becoming more and more entrenched this year. The reason for this are the massive, worldwide impairments of the supply chains. At the same time, order backlogs are reaching a historic record level. This shows: Customers want to buy cars, but the industry can only deliver to a limited extent.”

The private market lost about 3 percent in May to 75,600 units. Nevertheless, for the year as a whole, new private registrations were 0.5 percent higher than a year earlier.

New registrations of all-battery electric passenger cars bucked the overall market trend in May, up 9 percent to more than 29,000 units. Over the course of the year, the increase in purely electric vehicles is 17 percent. This corresponds to a good 135,000 registrations. By contrast, new registrations of plug-in hybrids fell by 15 percent in May to 23,200 units. In total, over 112,600 new plug-in hybrids have been registered so far in 2022 (down 15 percent). The above-average market shares of the VDIK member companies of 46 percent for pure battery electric passenger cars and 49 percent for plug-in hybrids are encouraging.

The market for diesel-powered passenger cars also continued to be weak. Between January and May, around 203,500 diesel passenger cars were newly registered, 22 percent fewer than in the same month last year. The diesel share has thus fallen to 20 percent (January to May 2021: 23 percent).

The commercial vehicle market recorded a significant drop of 20 percent in May, with around 24,300 new registrations. Nearly 125,000 new commercial vehicles were registered in the first five months of the year, a drop of 17 percent. While registrations of light commercial vehicles fell by 20 percent, the decline in heavy commercial vehicles was significantly lower at 4 percent.