MUNICH (dpa-AFX) - Data from the online portal Carwow suggest that new registrations of electric cars will remain comparatively weak in the coming months. For several months, the company has recorded a significantly lower share of electric cars in the vehicle configurations on its site. In the first quarter, it was around a quarter to a third lower than in the first three quarters of 2022.

To be sure, the configurations are not directly reflected in vehicle orders and the customers on Carwow do not necessarily correspond to the average car buyer. However, significant changes in configuration behavior are a good indication of changing customer interest. Since delivery times of half a year or more are not uncommon for electric cars, no significant increase in new registrations of electric cars is likely in the coming months.

After an extremely strong December, new e-car registrations fell sharply at the beginning of the year. One important reason for this is the capping of government subsidies. Experts have therefore already forecast a significant decline in new electric cars for the current year.

In terms of electric car production, however, Germany is on the verge of setting a new annual record. "We expect domestic production of electrically powered passenger cars to rise by 50 percent to 1.33 million units, 980,000 of which will be purely battery-electric cars," Hildegard Müller, president of the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA), told "Automobilwoche." According to the report, a total of 885,000 electric passenger cars had rolled off the production line in Germany in 2022, 300,000 of which were plug-in hybrids.

The reasons for this production ramp-up of electric cars are production facilities with increasing production, such as Tesla in Grünheide near Berlin or Mercedes-Benz in Bremen, as well as new e-models. "The demand-side driver," the VDA president emphasized, is exports. "On the other hand, less impetus is coming from the domestic market due to the partial reduction in subsidies at the beginning of the year."/ruc/hgo/DP/he