Passenger car market down 32 percent in November

The German passenger car market recorded a 32 percent year-on-year decline in November. The Federal Motor Transport Authority registered 198,300 new registrations. For the first eleven months, the decline amounts to 8 percent. A total of 2.39 million new passenger cars were registered. Among them, 961,300 were new passenger cars from international brands. The market share of the VDIK members was 41 percent in November.

Reinhard Zirpel, President of the Association of International Motor Vehicle Manufacturers, stated: “Since the middle of the year, the German passenger car market has been recording historic lows every month. The background to this is the production bottlenecks in the automotive industry. We have never experienced such a situation. Customers want to buy cars, but some of the manufacturers can’t deliver.”

Alternative drive systems, however, continued to perform well in November. According to the KBA, 40,300 new passenger cars with battery-electric drive systems (up 39 percent) were registered. In addition, 27,900 new plug-in hybrids (down 9 percent) hit the roads. Since the beginning of the year, 600,200 electric vehicles have been newly registered, an increase of 92 percent.

The market for diesel cars declined by 56 percent in November. Overall, nearly 489,000 diesel passenger cars were newly registered between January and November. This means that the share of passenger cars with diesel engines has fallen to 20 percent (same period in 2020: 29 percent).

The commercial vehicle market fell to 28,500 new registrations in November (down 22 percent). Over the year as a whole, the increase was 1 percent. Registrations of light commercial vehicles up to 3.5t were roughly on a par with the previous year, while new registrations of heavy commercial vehicles including buses increased by 8 percent.