Germany’s carmakers expect only a slight year-on-year increase in domestic passenger car production in 2025 – by 1% over 2024 – to 4.15 million units, Kallanish hears from national automotive association VDA.
The main reason for this is overall economic weakness, VDA notes. Foreign production of German brands is expected to increase by 2% to 9.7m cars globally.
With regard to electric cars, however, “we expect a positive development, after a production record was already reached last year,” says VDA chief economist Manuel Kallweit.
VDA forecasts domestic production of electric cars to increase by 24% in 2025, with battery-driven cars rising by 30%, and plug-in-hybrid cars by 2%. Overall, 1.7m electric cars are likely to be manufactured in Germany this year. The country will thus consolidate its position as the world’s second-largest production location for electric cars behind China, VDA underlines.
German passenger car production last year came to 4.1m units, about the same as in 2023. This meant a notable slowdown in the production rebound seen over the previous two years. In 2023, output from German plants had risen 18% year-on-year. In 2022, production increased 11% on-year, recovering gradually from the shortage of semiconductors that dominated 2021. However, compared to the pre-Covid year of 2019, 2023/24 output was still 12% lower, the association notes.
Christian Koehl Germany
