August 2023

The USA follows with 3.4 million and Germany with 1.9 million electric cars, France with 1.1 million and the United Kingdom with one million.

And China’s lead as the largest and most important market for electric vehicles is growing: According to ZSW, 6.5 million purely electric cars and plug-in hybrids were newly registered there last year – that’s almost 61 percent of the world’s new registrations in this vehicle category. Here, too, second place goes to the USA – with just under one million – ahead of Germany with 833,000.

“The figures clearly show that the global trend towards sustainable mobility will continue unabated in 2022, despite many crises,” says Andreas Püttner from ZSW. “But if Germany wants to reach its self-imposed target of 15 million electric vehicles by the end of 2030, at least twice as many vehicles as in 2022 will have to be newly registered in Germany every year.” Püttner justifies China’s rapid growth in electromobility last year with government support measures and the relatively low prices there.

The importance of electric vehicles in China is also currently growing rapidly. While car deliveries fell by around 5 percent overall in July, the area of ​​alternative drive systems, which includes pure battery electric vehicles as well as plug-in hybrids and fuel cell vehicles, grew by around a third. According to the industry association PCA (China Passenger Car Association), there were 647,000 vehicles. With the current development of sales, industry experts expect that electric cars will soon overtake combustion engines in the People’s Republic.

For the individual manufacturers, the ZSW does not count the stocks but the cumulative new registrations of the respective groups. As a rule, these are slightly higher than the stocks, since vehicles are also destroyed in accidents, break down or disappear from stock for other reasons. With 3.6 million cars, Tesla is – still – ahead. The US company’s lead has shrunk by a good half a million cars, as number two, BYD from China, has caught up strongly and is now at 3.3 million. SAIC, also Chinese, now has 2.4 million, displacing the VW group from third place. Volkswagen slipped to fourth place with 2.3 million, followed by BMW with 1.3 million.

In terms of new registrations, BYD was already in the lead last year and came to 1.8 million. It is followed by Tesla with 1.3 million and here, too, SAIC is displacing VW from third place with almost 1.2 million. According to ZSW, Wolfsburg is fourth with 831,000. BMW is sixth with 433,000, Mercedes eighth with 319,000.

“If Germany does not want to be left behind, the German car manufacturers must not only move in the premium segment, especially since Chinese companies are gradually penetrating the non-Chinese market,” emphasized Püttner. Because Chinese manufacturers cover the entire range of passenger cars: from the smallest passenger car to large premium vehicles. That’s enough for a market share of around 50 percent.

According to the analysis, however, the most common electric car models in the world are still Teslas: the Model 3 comes to 1.8 million units, the Model Y to 1.2 million. German manufacturers are not among the top ten in this category.