The German automotive industry significantly increased the export of electric cars last year. Half a million purely electric vehicles worth 24.2B euros were exported. That is even 65 percent more than in 2021, the Federal Bureau of Statistics announced.
The biggest buyers were Great Britain and the United States of America. The import of electric vehicles also increased significantly, by about a fifth (22.2 percent) to 358,000, the DPA agency reported.
Fueled by high subsidies, demand for e-vehicles is growing in Germany, and they are a key element in meeting climate goals in transport.
However, compared to classic vehicles, their share is still relatively small. Thus, according to statistics, about 471,000 new e-cars were registered in 2022, about 32 percent more than in the previous year. Thus, this type of vehicle reached a share of 18 percent in the total number of newly registered vehicles.
The production of electric vehicles has also grown strongly in Germany. In the first three quarters of 2022, the statistical office announced it reached around 375,600 e-vehicles, with a total value of slightly less than 16.2B euros.
That is about two-thirds more than in the same period a year earlier. In 2021, 328,000 purely electric cars were produced in Germany. Statisticians specified that the total number of exported vehicles includes those previously imported.
The export of classic vehicles declined
The most produced vehicles are still those with internal combustion engines. Only in the first nine months of last year 1.7M left the factory lines. That is almost five times more than the number of electric vehicles.
Nevertheless, the export of classic vehicles decreased slightly in 2022. In the case of passenger vehicles with only a classic engine, 1.4M cars were exported in the three most common types, 0.3 percent less than in 2021.
The most important customers were China and the USA. At the same time, the import of classic vehicles dropped significantly to 1M, which is a minus of 12.8 percent.
