BERLIN, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Passenger car registrations in Germany increased by almost 36 percent year-on-year in March, the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) announced on Wednesday.
However, the German passenger car market was "far from pre-crisis levels", the German Association of the Automotive Industry warned. Although registrations in March had gone up, they were still 15 percent below the level of March 2019.
With 656,452 registered cars in the first quarter of 2021, passenger car registrations in Germany were down 6.4 percent compared to last year, according to KBA.
"There has never been a worse first quarter since the statistics began," the Association of International Motor Vehicle Manufacturers (VDIK) said in a statement, stressing that new car registrations in Germany were 16 percent below the 10-year average.
The industry had not expected the first quarter of 2021 to be "even gloomier than the already extremely poor prior-year period", said Reinhard Zirpel, president of VDIK.
Registrations of cars with alternative drive systems, however, showed a "positive development", according to KBA.
With more than 30,000 newly registered battery electric vehicles in March, year-on-year registrations almost tripled and reached a total share of 10.3 percent.
Last year, the German government increased the premium when purchasing an electric vehicle until the end of the year, with subsidy rates for electric vehicles up to 9,000 euros (10,693 U.S. dollars) for vehicles with purely electric drives.
According to the official government target, the goal was to have seven to ten million electric vehicles registered in Germany by 2030. Enditem