Germany Set To Mark 1 Million EVs On Its Roads This Month

Germany is slated to mark one million electric cars on the road this month – a target the country is hitting 6 months later than it wanted. 

However, making it to a million still marks a milestone, Economy Minister Peter Altmaier told Tagesspiegel daily this week.

“We will reach our target of 1 million electric cars by 2020, which everyone thought was unattainable, this July, just six months late,” he said, according to U.S. News and World Report’s coverage of the story. 

“More bonuses have been taken up in the first half of 2021 than in the whole of last year,” he said of subsidies in the country, which have increased since the pandemic. 

Altmaier was also hopeful that the country would “exceed its longer-term goal of having 7-10 million EVs on its streets”. 

Sales of EVs tripled in the country in 2020, it was reported earlier this year by Automotive News Europe. 

Sales of EVs in 2020 were 194,163 units, according to the KBA motor vehicle authority, which was up about three fold from 2019. The adoption was a result of “the appeal of a more diversified product offering and of more reliable technology,” the report said. 

EVs with full or partial electric propulsion had a market share of 22% by the fourth quarter of 2020 and fully electric vehicles made up 1.2% of all registered passenger cars in Germany at the end of 2020, up from 0.5 percent a year earlier, the KBA said.