Germany registered 268,068 new cars in July 2026, BEV share hit a record 29.3%

Latest data: KBA has since published August 2026. Read the newer report. This page is kept as the record for its month.

Germany registered 268,068 new passenger cars in July 2026, up 1.2% on July 2025, according to the Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt. The volume barely moved. The mix did: 78,609 of those cars were battery-electric, up 61.7% year on year, taking a record 29.3% share of the month while petrol fell to 18.9% and diesel to 11.8%.

July 2026 headline numbers

Metric	July 2026	vs July 2025
Total new car registrations	268,068	+1.2%
BEV registrations	78,609	+61.7%
BEV share	29.3%	record high
PHEV registrations	30,609	11.4% share
Petrol share	18.9%	-29.7% volume
Diesel share	11.8%	-21.8% volume
Average CO2	91.2 g/km	-15.1%
YTD 2026 total	1,752,461	+5.1%

Top 4 brands, July 2026

Rank	Brand	Units	Share	YoY
1	Volkswagen	48,003	17.9%	-7.6%
2	Mercedes	26,624	9.9%	+8.0%
3	BMW	24,644	9.2%	+0.5%
4	Skoda	23,331	8.7%	-0.2%

What is driving the record share

KBA does not publish causes; this is AutoNergy's reading. The income-tested electric car grant of up to 6,000 euro, open for applications since 19 May 2026 and backdated to registrations from 1 January, is the most likely single factor, because it targets the buyers for whom the price gap decides the purchase. The second factor is supply: the incumbent brands, not a challenger, are delivering the volume, which is why Volkswagen can lose 7.6% of its total registrations while the national BEV count rises 61.7%.

The test that is still ahead

A backdated grant pulls demand forward twice over: it rewards buyers who already bought and it pushes undecided buyers to move now. Both effects run out. The fourth quarter of 2026 is the first clean read on German BEV demand at ordinary economics, and it is the number to watch rather than the July record itself.

Source and methodology

Figures from the KBA press release pm32/2026, published 6 August 2026, and independently corroborated by GoingElectric. Cumulative January to July registrations of 1,752,461 reconcile exactly with the sum of the published monthly series. The live monthly trend, powertrain mix and brand table sit on the Germany dashboard.