Passenger car market: significant drop in new registrations in December

With 241,883 new passenger car registrations, December closed with a significant drop of 23% compared to the same month last year. A total of around 2.84 million new passenger cars were registered in 2023, meaning that the market as a whole still recorded growth of 7.3% compared to the previous year. The VDIK market share was 40.8% in December.

Registrations of purely battery-electric passenger cars (BEV) and plug-in hybrids (PHEV) fell particularly sharply last month. A total of 72,548 new electric vehicles were registered, which corresponds to a decline of 58.3% compared to December 2022. While registrations of PHEVs fell by 74.4%, BEVs recorded a drop of 47.6% with 54,654 new registrations. This is partly due to the comparatively strong year-end spurt in the same month last year and partly to the early end of the scrapping premium for BEVs in mid-December 2023. Purely battery-electric passenger cars accounted for around 22.6% of all new passenger car registrations in December.

Despite the weak December, around 11.4% more purely battery-powered electric cars were newly registered than in the previous year. This means that 524,219 BEVs rolled onto the roads in 2023. Registrations of plug-in hybrids amounted to 175,724 passenger cars last year, which corresponds to around half of the previous year’s registration volume, when the purchase of plug-in hybrids was still subsidized by the environmental bonus.

Registrations in the commercial sector were particularly strong last year. At 67.1 percent, around 12.4 percent more new commercial vehicles were registered than in 2022, while private registrations fell by 1.9 percent.

The commercial vehicle market also lost around 14.9% in December compared to the same month last year. A total of 26,888 new commercial vehicles were registered. In 2023 as a whole, new commercial vehicle registrations totaled 359,689, resulting in overall annual growth of 15.1% compared to 2022.