Thanks to a combination of generous private vehicle purchase subsidies and fiscal benefits for plug-in company car drivers – partly to assist OEMs in meeting their EU CO2 obligation targets; partly to create a green stimulus to the market following the corona pandemic and finally a little bit perhaps to help outgoing Ms Merkel achieve here 1m plug-in vehicles on German roads legacy target by the end of 2021 – a falling CO2 emissions average from new car sales is slowly but surely delivering the goods.
KBA supplied data – provided only in the WLTP cycle since January 2019 – shows August levels fell to their lowest since records began (140.1g/km). The target manufacturers have to reach this year across 27 member states plus Norway, Iceland and the UK is around 121g/km in the WLTP cycle on average (95g/km weight-based target in the NEDC cycle being phased-in from 2020).
This drop in the CO2 average is reflected in record new plug-in registrations coming onto German roads with combined BEV/PHEV plug-in registrations during the opening 8-months of 2020 reaching 162,900 or 9.2% of all new passenger cars according to KBA data. This already surpasses 2019 full-year levels by 54,000 units with 4-months of the year remaining. This rise is likely to assure German manufacturers achieve their EU 2020 phased-in CO2 obligations... and Ms Merkel has something to smile about when she closes the door of the Chancellery for the final time next year.
Full data and trends are published each month in The European Electric Car Report.
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