Germany's registration authority has published how far the country's cars actually drove in 2025, and battery-electric cars averaged 11,312 kilometres against 8,406 for petrol cars — about a third further. That is the figure running across the German trade press today. The full table is more interesting, because electric cars do not top it.
How the number is produced
The Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt does not survey drivers. Its "Verkehr in Kilometern" series reads odometers at the periodic technical inspection every German car must pass, then projects those readings across the whole registered fleet. Since 2023 that has made it one of the few mileage datasets in Europe built on recorded distances rather than declared ones.
The table, in full
| Drivetrain | Average km, 2025 | Change in category total |
|---|---|---|
| Plug-in hybrid | 13,575 | −4.9% |
| Hybrid | 13,526 | +26.2% |
| Battery-electric | 11,312 | +25.8% |
| Petrol | 8,406 | −1.3% |
| Diesel | not broken out | −4.1% |
Two things follow. Both hybrid types are driven further than battery-electric cars, and the highest average of all belongs to the plug-in hybrid — the drivetrain whose own monitoring data shows it runs on petrol far more than its approval figures assume.
And diesel is missing. The reports carrying the 2025 figures give diesel's share of mileage and its decline but no per-car average, which leaves the ranking incomplete where it matters most: the KBA's own short report for 2024 put the average diesel car at 16,984 kilometres, half again as far as any electric car managed last year. Diesel is the long-distance fleet in Germany and remains so. Anyone taking "electric cars drive the furthest" from today's coverage is taking something the data does not say.
That 2024 report is not a clean comparison either — it grouped every alternative drivetrain into one line at 15,906 kilometres, and the KBA revised the 2023 and 2024 reporting years in May 2026. Readings across that boundary need care.
What grew was the fleet
The percentages above are movements in each category's total annual mileage — the sum across every car of that type — not in the per-car average. Electric and hybrid are the only categories posting increases, and the only ones whose fleets are growing; petrol, diesel and plug-in hybrid all fell. A fleet that expands covers more ground in aggregate almost regardless of driving habits.
Across every vehicle type, Germany covered 674.7 billion kilometres in 2025, up 0.7% from 670.2 billion. Passenger cars accounted for 562.3 billion of that, or 83.3%. Petrol cars still did 47.4% of all car mileage and diesels 35.4% — between them more than four fifths, which is the scale the electric growth rate should be read against.
Why it matters to a European buyer
Germany is one of Tesla's biggest European markets and the one it builds in: Grünheide makes the Model Y sold here, and the Model Y was Germany's best-selling electric car in June. The objection a German buyer hears most is that an electric car can only be a second car, kept for short trips. The registration authority's own odometer readings now show the average battery-electric car covering a third more distance than the average petrol car — not proof it replaces anything, but the end of the claim that these cars sit still.
The caveat runs the other way too. The electric fleet is much younger than the petrol fleet and far more heavily company-registered, and both raise mileage on their own. Some of the gap is what these cars are rather than how far they can go — and it lands in a market where 8% of Europeans say their next car will be electric while a fifth of new EU registrations already are.