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December saw plugin EVs take 30% share of the German auto market, down YoY from a huge pull-forward in December 2022. Full year 2023 BEV volumes were up 11.4% over 2022. December’s overall auto volume was 241,875 units, down 23% from the December 2022 pull-forward. December’s best selling full electric was the Volkswagen ID.4 / ID.5, and the Tesla Model Y took the win for full year 2023.
December’s combined plugin share of 30.0% comprised 22.6% full electrics (BEVs), and 7.4% plugin hybrids (PHEVs). These compare YoY with figures of 55.4%, with 33.2% BEV, and 22.2% PHEV.
December 2022 saw a huge pull-forward of plugin sales — taking over half of auto sales that month — ahead of the January 1st 2023 stopping of PHEV incentives, and significant cuts in BEV incentives. December 2023 wasn’t going to repeat that situation, but was due for a modest pull-forward for BEVs ahead of planned further incentive trimming from January 2024. However, things took a sharp and unexpected U-turn instead.
In mid-December 2023, the traffic light government summarily announced that all remaining BEV incentives, typically amounting to €3,000 per vehicle — previously slated to be available throughout 2024 — would be immediately cut from 17th December (with one day’s notice). We published a dedicated report on this debacle a couple of weeks ago.
This means that whatever modest pull-forward may have been gathering momentum across December was curtailed. Some manufacturers offered “in house” incentives to partly compensate customers for the government reversal, but the broad rush to make BEV purchases, ahead of January 1st, quickly disappeared. The result was that BEV sales volume in December ended up at a total of 54,654, little different from a “normal” end of quarter month, almost the same as they were back in June (52,988 units). This amounted to a market share of 22.6%.
With policy volatility like that just witnessed in Germany, it is anyone’s guess how the auto market will respond over the coming few months. In the longer term, BEVs will continue to grow share, but consumer sentiment and demand for BEVs, after this “incredibly big breach of trust for tens of thousands of customers” (as the ZDK president put it), will presumably take some time to resettle over the coming months.
PHEV share has remained fairly stable in the range of 5% to 7.5% throughout 2023, and the 7.4% seen in December was unexceptional.
Combined combustion-only share remained below 50% for the third consecutive month, at 46.4% in December.
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