Despite slight decline in February: recovery for BEVs, growth for PHEVs

In February 2025, new passenger car registrations in Germany fell by 6.4% compared to the same month last year. However, this month had one more working day, so the calendar-adjusted decline was -1.7%. A total of 203,434 new vehicles were registered in the second month of the year. This is according to an analysis of the figures from the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) by the Association of International Motor Vehicle Manufacturers (VDIK). According to the preliminary figures, new passenger car registrations of international brands accounted for 42.0 percent of the total market in February. A total of 411,074 new passenger cars have been registered since the beginning of the year, 4.6 percent fewer than in the same period last year.

35,949 purely battery electric passenger cars (BEVs) were newly registered in February 2025, an increase of 30.8% compared to the weak same month last year. In February of last year, the market for electric passenger cars continued to suffer from the end of the purchase subsidy for electric vehicles for private customers in December 2023. This led to electric vehicle purchases being brought forward, with the result that registration volumes fell significantly at the beginning of 2024. The BEV market share in February 2025 was 17.7% of all new passenger car registrations, around 5.1 percentage points higher than in the same month last year. Since the beginning of the year, a total of 70,447 BEVs have been newly registered, which corresponds to growth of 41.0% compared to the same period last year. The BEV market share in the first two months of 2025 is therefore 17.1%. However, a share of around 25% would be required to achieve the planned CO2 fleet limits.

Plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) also recorded significant growth in February 2025 compared to the same month last year. New PHEV registrations rose by 34.0% to 19,534 vehicles last month. This corresponds to a market share of 9.6%, which is by far the highest market share since the end of the PHEV purchase incentive in December 2022, following the respective provisional highs in recent months. In the PHEV market, the international brands showed above-average growth in February with a provisional increase of 58.3%, bringing their market share to 41.6% of the total PHEV market. A total of 37,246 PHEV passenger cars have been newly registered since the beginning of the year (+28.6%), giving them a market share of 9.1% of all new passenger car registrations.

In total, electric vehicles – i.e. BEVs and PHEVs combined – accounted for 55,483 new passenger car registrations in February, 31.9% more than in the same month last year. Their market share was 27.3% (February 2024: 19.3%). Since the beginning of the year, 107,693 electric vehicles have been newly registered, bringing their market share to 26.2%.

The number of new commercial vehicle registrations in February was 24,751, 23.1% lower than in February of the previous year. Since January 2025, 52,757 new commercial vehicles have been registered (-14.1%).