In July, 300,300 passenger cars rolled off production lines in Germany, Kallanish learns from the latest national automotive association VDA figures.
Production was thus 20% higher than in the same month of the previous year. A total of 2.5 million passenger cars were produced in the first seven months. This is an increase of 31% on the same period last year.
Despite the positive trend of the past months, VDA notes that output remains significantly below pre-Covid levels. In the first seven months of the current year, 11% fewer vehicles were produced than in the first half of the pre-Covid year 2019.
Last month, VDA president Hildegard Müller cautioned that figures from the first half-year are a “rear-view mirror view”, as the order backlog has been worked down. She warned that “our expectations for the coming quarters are not positive”.
Data now available for electric vehicles (EVs) for the first half of the year show that production in this segment is growing particularly strongly. In H1, 672,900 electric cars were produced in Germany, up 93% year-on-year. The production of pure battery electric cars (BEV) is growing particularly strongly. A total of 523,900 BEVs came off the production line in the first six months, 142% more than in the corresponding period last year.
VDA claims that Germany has overtaken the USA in the production of e-cars and is now in second place worldwide. For many German steelmakers and fabricators, this is hardly good news. Special bar qualities (SBQs) are to a large extent sold for making combustion engines. SBQ makers are the losers in the transition towards electric vehicles, as the latest quarterly figures of Swiss Steel have shown, for example.
Christian Koehl Germany
