According to our monthly market intelligence report, The European Electric Car Study, almost four in ten new passenger cars manufactured in Germany in August were either a pure electric BEV or a PHEV, using VDA data.
Thirty-eight per cent of all the new models rolling off lines from Munich to Emden were models capable of recharging with an external cord, according to the report, published this week.
That was a new record, surpassing the previous high of 35 per cent, recorded last August by three percentage points.
The data includes Tesla's Grünheide production facility.
Tesla employees told the report that a current 5,000-6,000 weekly run-rate is in operation, which would translate to roughly 20,000-24,000 units of the 117,642 new German plug-in models stemming from Tesla.
Therefore, around every fifth German-manufactured plug-in vehicle in August at the higher end of that corridor was a Tesla.
Significantly the large increase in August, indicates a number of German production lines may have been retooled during the traditional summer shutdown to produce more plug-in models and give a forward-looking indication of how the European market is likely to progress heading into 2025 when the EU CO2 fleet emission targets are cut to 93.6g/km (WLTP), or a 15% reduction over current levels.
The increase also likely relates to the UK's first year of the ZEV (zero emission vehicle) mandate being introduced.
Manufacturers have to achieve a 22% mix of all their new passenger car registrations being ZEVs in 2024, although certain adjustment mechanisms are also available.
Taking into consideration the logistical lag of manufacturing these vehicles, transporting them to ports and shipping them to the UK, and then to dealerships, September is likely to see this trend maintained as German OEMs prioritise UK shipments in the final months of this year.
The VDA continue to forecast that 1.3 million plug-in passenger cars will be manufactured across the country during 2024, or a four per cent increase over the same period last year.
The introduction of new models such as Ford's Cologne-built Explorer/Capri (helping VW's MEB scaling drive) as well as the PPE-architecture-based Porsche Macan and Audi A6/Q6 in the second half of 2024 will help that push.
We explain to our subscribers the reason for this and the trajectory going forward.
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*Western Europe 18 Markets: EU Member States prior to the 2004 enlargement plus EFTA markets Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, plus UK
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