BERLIN (dpa-AFX) - The electric car market has suffered a major setback following the reduction in subsidies - the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) expects a corresponding decline in market share. This is likely to fall by three percentage points year-on-year to 28 percent in 2023, VDA President Hildegard Müller told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper. The decline is due to the expected slump in sales of plug-in hybrids, i.e. cars with both a combustion engine and an electric motor. The purchase of these cars has no longer been subsidized by the government since the turn of the year. The subsidy for electric cars has been significantly reduced.

The number of new registrations of plug-in hybrids will fall by around 30 percent to 255,000 units, Müller told the newspaper. For pure electric cars, the association expects sales to grow by 8 percent year-on-year to 765,000 cars.

In January, about 18,100 electric vehicles were newly registered and just under 9,000 plug-in hybrids - a sharp drop compared especially to December, when more than 100,000 pure electric vehicles and nearly 70,000 plug-in hybrids were registered. Compared to January 2022, registrations for these two drive types were down 13.2 percent and 53.2 percent, respectively. Experts believe that many consumers brought forward car purchases in order to still receive the higher subsidy premiums at the end of 2022.

The reduced government subsidies would have a "negative impact on the ramp-up of electromobility," Müller said. "That makes it all the more important now to boost people's confidence in electromobility in other ways." Consumers need "the certainty of being able to charge uncomplicatedly at any time and anywhere," he said. In order to achieve the German government's target of one million charging points by 2030, he said, the pace of expansion would have to be quintupled./nif/DP/mis