Status: 05.07.2021 3:18 p.m.
The number of e-cars on Germany’s roads continued to rise in June. But overall, the number of new car registrations is still well below the pre-crisis level.
In Germany, significantly more cars were newly registered in June than in the previous year – but the numbers were still well below the pre-crisis level. The Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) reported around 274,000 new registrations for June today, almost 25 percent more than in June 2020. In May the increase had already been around 37 percent.
The gap compared to the pre-crisis year 2019 thus narrowed from 31 percent in May to 16 percent. “There can still be no talk of a radical market recovery, the pre-crisis level remains a long way off,” said the car expert from the management consultancy EY, Peter Fuß. Despite the race to catch up after the corona shock, the number of new registrations will not reach the pre-crisis level by far, even for the year as a whole. The Association of International Motor Vehicle Manufacturers (VDIK) expects growth of six percent in 2021 compared to the previous year to 3.1 million new registrations. The volume would thus be four percent below the long-term average.
Shortage of semiconductors
One of the reasons for the weak recovery is the lack of semiconductors. According to the current estimate, around 600,000 fewer vehicles than originally expected roll off the assembly line in Germany alone. “The supply bottlenecks for semiconductors continue to be an obstacle to production,” explained the automotive association VDA.
Control chips have been in short supply in the automotive industry since the end of last year because the chip manufacturers mainly supply the manufacturers of smartphones, computers and game consoles due to the changed demand in the corona pandemic. For this reason, the production lines at all German car manufacturers are temporarily idle and short-time work is ordered. In the meantime, this also affects BMW, after the Munich-based company was initially little affected thanks to higher stocks.
Boom in electric cars
The boom continues unabated for new vehicles with electric drives. A total of around 149,000 battery drives were launched in Germany in the first half of 2021, three times more than in the previous year, the KBA announced. More than one in ten new cars had an electric motor. In the first half of last year, their share was just 3.5 percent of all new registrations. The corona crisis caused the entire car sales to collapse at the time.
The VDA rates the increasing number of alternative drives as a great success. “However, the charging infrastructure has to catch up,” said VDA President Hildegard Müller. “By 2030, Germany needs more than a million charging points for e-cars and e-vans and thus considerably more efforts.”