The majority of zero-emission vehicles are exported.
The boom in electromobility has long since reached the German automotive industry. Although significantly more passenger cars with purely internal combustion engines were still produced in Germany in 2021 than with exclusively electric drives, the ratio has shifted significantly in favor of zero-emission vehicles, as current figures from the Federal Statistical Office show. Around 328,000 e-cars rolled off the production line in 2021, an increase of 85.8 percent compared to 2020 and as much as 268 percent compared to 2019.
At around 300,000 vehicles, the majority of pure e-cars produced in Germany were exported, mainly to the United Kingdom, the United States and Norway. The number of e-cars imported to Germany is similarly high at 292,000 vehicles, originating mainly from France, Slovakia and the United States.
The fact that 2021 was a record year for electromobility in the Federal Republic is also shown by the figures from the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA): 355,961 purely electric cars received a new registration that year (we reported).
Worldwide, the share of alternative drive systems is also rising, as a recent study by the auditing and consulting firm PwC makes clear. China in particular is driving growth in the sector. This is not surprising, as the country has a quasi-monopoly on many of the raw materials and components needed to manufacture e-cars. These include magnetic materials made of rare earths, which are necessary for the production of the motors. European vehicle manufacturers, on the other hand, are heavily reliant on imports for these components, and it is also not surprising that around 98 percent of them come from the People’s Republic.
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