Flensburg (dpa) – For car buyers, electric drives are increasingly an alternative. Their share of new registrations rose to a high in September, as shown by figures from the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) on Tuesday.
17.1 percent were battery electric cars and 12.7 percent plug-in hybrids. Pure diesel drives came to 15.9 percent, gasoline engines to 35.9 percent.
Despite the increasing sales of electric drives, the industry continues to suffer from the bottlenecks in semiconductors, which are mainly needed for electric cars.
The Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) therefore corrected its forecast for the total number of cars produced in Germany in the current year significantly down on Tuesday: from 3.6 million vehicles to now 2.9 million. An association spokesman confirmed a corresponding report in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” on Tuesday evening.
Last year, despite the Corona crisis, around 3.5 million vehicles were produced, according to “FAZ”, and even 4.7 million in 2019. What the lower production numbers will mean for new registrations in 2021 remained open on Tuesday.
The federal government and the manufacturers are promoting the purchase of electric cars with up to 9,000 euros. That should improve the climate balance. According to KBA, all vehicles registered in September emitted an average of 111.6 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer, around 17 percent less than a year ago.
A total of 196,972 cars were newly registered in September. That was a good quarter less than in the same month last year and the weakest September value since 1991. In the second half of 2020, the federal government lowered the value-added tax in order to stimulate the economy during the Corona crisis.
For the year as a whole, the German car market has so far been 1.2 percent in the red with around two million vehicles. In the factories, supply bottlenecks for semiconductors continue to hinder production, as the Association of the Automotive Industry announced. “The German car market is getting into increasingly difficult waters,” commented the Association of International Motor Vehicle Manufacturers.
Suppliers warned on Tuesday that the lack of chips and high prices for raw materials and energy would cause many medium-sized companies to exist. Deliveries would be canceled at short notice, trucks would have to turn back, criticized the supplier industry working group. Car manufacturers refused to pay due to the lack of chips. The trade association of the German rubber industry warned of a wave of bankruptcies among small and medium-sized auto suppliers until Christmas.