New vehicle registrations: Electromobility awaits the German government’s go-ahead signal

In April 2025, new passenger car registrations in Germany fell by 0.2% year-on-year to 242,728 vehicles. However, this month had one more working day, meaning that calendar-adjusted growth amounted to +4.8%. This is the result of an analysis of the figures from the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) by the Association of International Motor Vehicle Manufacturers (VDIK). New passenger car registrations of international brands accounted for around 42.3% of the total market in April 2025. Since the beginning of the year, a total of 3.3 percent fewer vehicles have been registered than in the same period last year. This amounted to a total of 907,299 passenger cars, including 389,006 vehicles from international brands.

45,535 purely battery electric passenger cars (BEVs) were newly registered in April 2025, an increase of 53.5% compared to the same month last year. New registrations for international brands even rose by 91.3% to 18,412 vehicles. In April of last year, however, the market for electric cars continued to suffer from the termination of the purchase subsidy for electric vehicles at the end of 2023. This led to electric vehicle purchases being brought forward, with the result that registration volumes in 2024 fell significantly. The BEV market share in April 2025 was 18.8% of all new passenger car registrations, around 6.6 percentage points higher than in the same month last year. A total of 158,503 BEVs have been newly registered since the beginning of the year, which corresponds to growth of 42.8% compared to the same period last year. International brands accounted for around 38.7% of this figure, meaning that their market share is expected to have risen by 6.3 percentage points compared to the same period last year. The BEV market share in the first four months of 2025 is therefore 17.5%, which is still not at the level required to achieve the CO2 limit targets.

“The lack of clarity in recent months has continued to lead to uncertainty and a reluctance to buy among e-car customers. However, slightly positive signals in new registrations and an increase in incoming orders in April gave reason to hope that the market could recover somewhat. The future coalition government must now quickly turn its vision of ramping up electromobility into action in order to take this momentum with it and help the expansion of e-mobility to gather pace. We finally need a clear starting signal from the future federal government regarding the planned funding measures and the reduction in electricity prices so that prospective buyers can get out of the waiting loop and the automotive transformation can take off,” says VDIK President Imelda Labbé.

Plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) also recorded strong growth in April 2025 compared to the same month last year. New PHEV registrations rose by 60.7% to 24,317 vehicles last month. This corresponds to a market share of 10.0%, which is around 3.8 percentage points higher than the previous year’s figure. In the PHEV market, the international brands showed above-average growth in April with a provisional increase of 77.1%, increasing their market share to 39.6% of the total PHEV market. A total of 88,116 PHEV passenger cars have been newly registered since the beginning of the year (+46.6%), giving them a market share of 9.7% of all new passenger car registrations.

In total, electric vehicles – i.e. BEVs and PHEVs combined – accounted for 69,852 new passenger car registrations in April, 55.9% more than in the same month last year. Their market share was 28.8% (April 2024: 18.4%). Since the beginning of the year, 246,619 electric vehicles have been newly registered, bringing their market share to 27.2%.

The number of new commercial vehicle registrations in April was 27,545, 16.9% lower than in April of the previous year. Since January 2025, 110,081 new commercial vehicles have been registered (-15.0%).

Source: KBA, VDIK

* Preliminary values