Almost 35% of the new cars registered in Germany last month were fully electric. The Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt counted 88,599 new battery-electric cars in September 2026, a 34.5% share of a 256,774-car market and 94.7% more than the 45,495 registered in September 2025.
That is a second consecutive record, and a wide margin on the 32.4% that first cleared 30% in August. The total market grew 9.0%. Electric registrations grew more than ten times as fast.
Every powertrain, September 2026
| Cars | Share | Year on year | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Battery-electric | 88,599 | 34.5% | +94.7% |
| Hybrid (incl. plug-in) | 98,871 | 38.5% | +1.7% |
| of which plug-in hybrid | 27,861 | 10.8% | +0.0% |
| Petrol | 44,632 | 17.4% | −29.2% |
| Diesel | 23,058 | 9.0% | −20.1% |
| Total market | 256,774 | — | +9.0% |
Average CO2 across new registrations fell 19.6% to 82.7 g/km.
The plug-in hybrid did not move
The headline is the petrol collapse — nearly 30% of its volume gone in a year, in a market that grew. But the more revealing line is the one that did nothing at all. Plug-in hybrids came in at +0.0%, dead flat, while the battery-electric car next to them nearly doubled.
Germany's purchase grant is the obvious reason. DIW Berlin's audit of the scheme found 91% of approvals went to battery-electric cars and only 9% to plug-in hybrids, with an average grant of 4,380 euros weighted towards cheaper models. A subsidy that overwhelmingly funds one technology and barely touches the other has produced exactly that split in the registration data.
Battery-electric and plug-in hybrid cars together took 45.4% of the German market in September. Petrol and diesel together took 26.4%.
Where Tesla sits in Europe's biggest market
The KBA has published the powertrain breakdown but not the brand detail, so there is no Tesla September figure yet — ecomento's brand-by-brand table has run around the middle of the following month this year. Anyone quoting a Tesla German September number today is not quoting the KBA.
What is on the record is the direction. Tesla registered 3,034 cars in Germany in August, up 110.5% after a weak July, and DIW puts it as the single largest brand beneficiary of the grant at 16% of all subsidised battery-electric cars — ahead of Škoda on 9%. September is also a quarter-closing month, which is when Tesla's European deliveries bunch.
The supply side is the open question. Grünheide builds the Model Y for Europe, and in early September the plant was running about 1,000 cars a week short of its 7,500 target for mid-October, with mandatory special shifts agreed to close the gap.
A market absorbing 88,599 electric cars a month is the demand environment Tesla's German plant was expanded for. Whether it can supply into it is a separate question, and the brand table will start to answer it.
Update: 2026-10-05
On 5 October 2026, hours after this article went out, the Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt published the brand-level detail the section above said was still missing. Tesla registered 12,552 cars in Germany in September, up 268.7% year on year and 4.9% of the total market — roughly one in seven of the month's 88,599 battery-electric cars, and more than four times the 3,034 it managed in August. Teslamag reports it as one of Tesla's strongest months on record in Germany. Across the first nine months of 2026 the brand stands at 44,810 registrations, up 201.9%. The note above that no Tesla September figure was yet available referred to ecomento's brand table, which still has not run; the KBA's own release has overtaken it.