Battery-electric cars took a record 37% of Germany’s new car market in October, according to data released today by the Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt (KBA), the country’s federal motor vehicle authority. That’s 94,086 BEVs, up 79.5% from 52,425 a year earlier.
📌 The Core Development
For the second month in a row, German buyers registered more fully electric cars than gasoline and diesel cars combined. And with two months left in the year, Germany has already blown past the auto industry’s EV forecast for all of 2026.
The overall market barely grew in October. Total new car registrations rose 1.7% to 254,492 units, which means the EV growth came straight out of combustion cars.
🔍 Background & Sector Context
Gasoline car registrations crashed 40.5% to 38,516 units, a 15.1% share. Diesel fell 21.6% to 23,882 units, or 9.4% of the market. Add them up and pure combustion cars made up just 24.5% of new registrations, 12.5 points less than BEVs alone.
Plug-in hybrids slipped 7.9% to 28,499 units (11.2%). So plug-ins accounted for about 48% of the German market last month, and the average CO2 emissions of new cars dropped 21.1% year-over-year to 79.4 g/km.
📊 Industry & Real-World Impact
As we reported this summer, BEVs became the most popular powertrain in Germany for the first time in June with a 28.4% share. They’ve kept climbing every month since: 32.4% in August, 34.5% in September, and now 37% in October.
Benchmark Telemetry & EV Fuel Savings
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🔮 Strategic Outlook & What Lies Ahead
Through the first ten months of the year, Germany has registered 698,230 BEVs, up 60.7% year-over-year. That’s about 28.2% of the 2,476,290 new cars registered in 2026 so far, up from roughly 19% for the full year 2025.
And the industry didn’t see it coming. In December, the VDA, Germany’s auto industry association, forecast about 693,000 BEV registrations for all of 2026. Germany passed that in October. At the current pace, it’s on track for somewhere around 875,000 by the end of the year.
