The German car industry significantly increased exports of electric cars last year. A total of 500,000 purely electric vehicles worth 24.2 billion euros were exported, a good 65 percent more than in 2021, according to the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden. The most important buyers were Great Britain and the USA. Imports of e-cars also increased significantly – by a good fifth (22.2 percent) to 358,000 vehicles.
Driven by high subsidy premiums, the demand for electric cars in Germany is growing. They are considered to be a crucial element in achieving the climate goals in transport. Measured against combustion vehicles, however, they still play a small role. According to statistics, around 471,000 purely electric cars were newly registered in 2022 – a good 32 percent more than in the previous year. This means that e-cars accounted for almost 18 percent of new registrations.
Strong gains
The production of electric cars in Germany has also increased significantly. In the first three quarters of 2022, it amounted to around 375,600 electric cars worth almost 16.2 billion euros, as the statisticians also announced. That is around two thirds more than in the same period last year. In 2021, around 328,000 purely electric cars were manufactured in Germany. According to the agency, the number of exported e-cars also includes vehicles that were previously imported.
However, the vast majority of vehicles produced are still combustion engines: In the first nine months of 2022, 1.7 million combustion engines rolled off the assembly line – almost five times as many as electric cars and an increase of 5.7 percent within a year.
Meanwhile, exports of combustion engines fell slightly in 2022. 1.48 million cars were exported in the three most important displacement classes for passenger cars with exclusively combustion engines, 0.3 percent fewer than in the previous year. The most important buyers were China and the USA. At the same time, imports of combustion engines fell noticeably to 1.0 million – a drop of 12.8 percent.
