The German car market recorded a minus of 3 percent last month compared to November 2019. This fall is a lot less severe than in the United Kingdom and our own country. Sales of electric cars also showed a big plus for our eastern neighbors.
During the past month, 290,150 new cars were registered in Germany. Among the German brands, the blow that Volkswagen has received is particularly striking: compared to November 2019, the brand from Wolfsburg recorded a decrease of 18.4 percent. Its market share is still the largest with 17.6 percent of all new registrations. BMW shows a modest minus of 1.4 percent in the number of new registrations, while Audi and Mercedes have done relatively well with pluses of 3.1 and 0.5 percent respectively. Tesla even showed an increase of 500 percent, but the absolute number of cars sold remains relatively low at 1,680 units. Among the non-German brands, Fiat (+42.7 percent), Toyota (+33.1 percent), Renault (+29.2 percent) and Citroën (+28.6 percent) performed remarkably well. Big losers are Ssangyong (-48 percent), Jaguar (-34.8 percent), Mitsubishi (-27 percent), Alfa Romeo (-21.9 percent) and Seat (-21.6 percent).
In Germany too, the focus of the consumer seems to be slowly but surely shifting to EVs and plug-in hybrids. In November 2020, no less than 522.8 percent more EVs were sold compared to the same month in 2019, the final number was 28,965 copies. The number of EVs in Germany still lags behind plug-in hybrids and hybrids, of which 30,621 and 71,904 cars were registered respectively. Nevertheless, this means that of the more than 290,000 cars sold in Germany, a total of 131,490 units have some form of electric drive. As a result, the market share of petrol cars has fallen to 40.4 percent, diesel is stuck at 24.3 percent.
With a total decrease of three percent in the number of new license plate registrations, the German car market was hit considerably less hard in November than the Dutch and British markets. In the United Kingdom, the fall last month was no less than 27.4 percent, thanks to the latest lockdown, in the Netherlands 14.3 percent fewer new cars were registered on the number plate compared to November last year.