The prices that consumers pay for the most popular new cars in Germany have risen significantly in recent months. Combustion engines in particular have become more expensive.
New cars have recently become significantly more expensive. The average transaction prices for the 20 most popular combustion engines have risen sharply since April, according to an analysis by industry expert Ferdinand Dudenhöffer. Electric cars also grew, but at a much slower rate, which meant that the price gap between the two types of drive system shrank.
For September, Dudenhöffer found average transaction prices of around 33,000 euros for the 20 most important combustion engines. That was a good 10 percent more than in April. For the most important electric cars, the increase was significantly slower. This went up by a good 4 percent to 40,500 euros.
Although the values must be interpreted with a certain degree of caution because they were calculated without weighting the sales figures of the individual models, they still provide a good view of the development of the market.
Changes in the discounts are not decisive for the increase in the price of combustion engines. The discount level for them collected by Dudenhöffer has only fallen by 0.7 percentage points since April. For purely electric cars, the discount level has increased by 0.3 percentage points. According to the expert, an increase in list prices – especially for combustion engines – is responsible for the current development of transaction prices.
The different developments are also shrinking the price difference between electric vehicles and combustion engines. According to Dudenhöffer’s calculations, it was still at 30 percent in April, but recently it was only 23 percent. The industry expert also assumes that the gap will continue to shrink.
“A strategy appears to be taking hold to slowly reduce the price difference through higher price increases for combustion engines,” he writes in his study. “So no higher discounts on electric cars, but higher list prices for combustion engines.” Whether this can be implemented on the market will become apparent in the coming months.
