Contrary to all efforts to turn around traffic, there are more cars on the road in Germany than ever before. At the beginning of the year, 48.5 million cars were registered. In addition to major regional differences, statisticians see a simple reason behind the growing car density.
Despite the debate about a traffic turnaround triggered by climate change, more and more cars are driving in Germany. According to the Federal Statistical Office based on figures from the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) and its own calculations, the number of passenger cars has increased continuously over the past ten years. According to this, in 2021 there were 580 cars per 1000 inhabitants - a record value. For comparison: in 2011 the value was still 517. "The reason for the increase in car density is that the number of cars registered in Germany has increased significantly more than the population in the period mentioned," the statisticians explained this trend.
The regional differences in car density are large: last year it was highest in the western states of Saarland (658 cars per 1000 inhabitants), Rhineland-Palatinate (632) and Bavaria (622). The city states of Berlin (337), Hamburg (435) and Bremen (438) had the lowest values - "among other things due to a particularly dense public transport network", as it was said. The eastern German federal states not only had values for 2021 that were below the national average. According to the Federal Office, the number of passenger cars there has increased less than in Germany as a whole since 2011.
As in Germany, the car density has also increased in all other member states of the European Union (EU) in a ten-year comparison. Among the 27 members, Germany was last in eighth place among the states. The top places are occupied by Luxembourg (682), Italy (670) and Poland (664). The car density was lowest in Romania (379), Latvia (390) and Hungary (403).
The number of registered cars in Germany is growing: as of January 1, 2022, 48.5 million passenger cars were registered in Germany - more than ever before (2021: 48.2 million). At the same time, cars with electric drives are on the rise. In the case of newly registered cars from January to July 2022, their share was already 13.6 percent. A year earlier it was still 0.6 percent. The proportion of households that own at least one car was 77.0 percent in 2021, similar to 2011 (77.9 percent). However, the proportion of households with two cars rose from 23.4 to 27.0 percent, and those with three or more cars from 3.7 to 6.1 percent.
