Special effects lead to increase in car registrations in January – 2024 will be a difficult year for cars

The German passenger car market started the year with a plus characterized by special effects. Compared to the same month last year, new registrations grew by 19.1% to 213,553 units. The growth can be explained primarily by the extremely weak January 2023, when sales of electric registrations collapsed due to sales being brought forward.

Reinhard Zirpel, President of the Association of International Motor Vehicle Manufacturers (VDIK), explained: “The January registration figures in the passenger car market as a whole, but also in the electric market, are of little significance due to special effects and do not realistically reflect the market situation. We continue to expect around 2.85 million passenger cars this year and thus a market significantly below the level of the pre-crisis years. In particular, the abrupt abolition of the environmental bonus in December has greatly unsettled consumers and will leave a clear mark this year.”

22,474 purely battery electric vehicles (BEV) were on the roads in January 2024. This is around 24 percent more than in January of the previous year. To put this into context: Due to the reduction of the BEV environmental bonus from January 1, 2023, there were significant early purchases of electric vehicles at the end of 2022, with the result that registration volumes fell sharply in January 2023.The BEV registration share was only 10.5% in January 2024. In December 2023, this share was still just under 23%.

14,394 plug-in hybrids were newly registered in January (up 63% compared to January 2023). Here, too, the significant growth is due to special statistical effects. As of December 31, 2022, the state subsidy for PHEVs had expired completely, with correspondingly large pull-forward effects at the end of the year and a massive slump in January 2023.

The commercial vehicle market grew by 9.6% to 29,244 registrations in January. Both light and heavy commercial vehicles contributed to the increase.