More and more e-car drivers are switching back to combustion engines

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung More and more e-car drivers are switching back to combustion engines Article by Tobias Piller • 8 hours • 3 minutes reading time In the third quarter of 2024, only 3.9 percent of private car buyers opted for a purely battery-electric drive. Previously, in the last quarters of 2022 and 2023, the proportion of people switching from combustion engines to electric cars had reached 6.9 percent and 6.6 percent - each influenced by an impending reduction in the environmental bonus for electric cars. At the same time, there are more and more private car buyers who are switching back from their previous electric car to a combustion engine. Their rate was 14 percent in 2021 and has now reached 34 percent in the first nine months of 2024. These are the most important results of a study by the insurance company HUK-Coburg. As the largest German car insurer with 13.9 million insured vehicles and a market share of a quarter among privately registered vehicles, it can also find representative data on the development of the car market in-house. HUK's data on combustion and electric drives in cars also confirmed that the choice of drive depends greatly on the personal living situation: While the share of purely electric cars among private car operators on average in Germany was 2.9 percent, it was 4.1 percent among homeowners, 2.4 percent among apartment owners and only 1.3 percent among tenants. In Bavaria, the share of electric cars reached 3.4 percent and in Lower Saxony 3.2 percent, while Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony occupy the last places in the German ranking with 1.5 percent. Not just electric cars to blame - Why the car industry is making losses despite billions in investments In principle, there is still a constant willingness to buy an electric car: For 18 percent of private car buyers, only an electric drive will be an option when buying a new car in 2024. This is the result of a survey for the insurance company HUK, for which Yougov interviewed around 4,000 people in Germany. Among potential buyers of electric cars, however, age plays a major role: Of those surveyed under the age of 40, 28 percent definitely wanted to buy an electric car as their next car, compared to only 12 percent of those over the age of 40. According to the survey, a third of potential German car buyers do not want to pay any extra for an electric car. In contrast, 19 percent of those surveyed said they were willing to pay up to 10 percent more for a car with a purely electric drive, and 33 percent would even accept a price premium of more than 10 percent. Overall, the survey also showed widespread skepticism about electric drives: 46 percent found the electric drive good or very good, while 47 percent found it "less good" or "not good at all". Accordingly, 29 percent also answered that they would only switch to a battery-electric car if only electric cars were legally allowed to be registered. While the once-propagated "ramp-up of electromobility" has stalled in Germany, the American analysis firm Gartner expects strong growth in the global market for electric cars. The number of battery-electric cars will rise from 32.6 million in 2023 and 45.9 million in 2024 to 61.9 million by 2025, with growth of 33 percent in 2025, driven primarily by demand from China. In the coming year, 2025, 23.9 million cars with plug-in drives will also be bought. Of the global market total of 85.1 million electric cars for 2025, 49 million were in China, 20.6 million in Europe and 10.4 million in North America.