Carwow published a survey of German car buyers on 28 September 2026 that reads, at first glance, like every other EV sentiment poll: fuel is expensive, so people are thinking about electric cars. The interesting figures are further down, and they are about waiting rather than wanting.
What respondents said about fuel prices
| Response to high fuel prices | Share |
|---|---|
| Considering an electric car more strongly | 57.8% |
| Prioritising lower consumption | 15.4% |
| Bringing the purchase forward | 10.1% |
| No effect on their thinking | 16.6% |
Asked what their next car would be, 66.4% named a pure battery-electric vehicle, 15.2% a hybrid, and 7.8% petrol or diesel, with 10.5% undecided. Over a two-week window, configurations built on carwow's own site ran 79% electric, 10% hybrid, 9% petrol and 2% diesel.
Those numbers need their source read into them. Carwow is a car-buying comparison portal, so both the panel and the configurator traffic are people already shopping, and increasingly shopping for EVs. This is not a representative sample of German drivers, and the 79% configurator figure measures the platform's visitors, not the market — German battery-electric share of new registrations is running well below it.
It is also not carwow's first survey of the year on this theme. The company ran one in March and another at the end of July, the latter with 1,000 users. Taken as a series, its own configurator share is the number worth following: 41–43% electric at the start of 2026, 70–74% by late July, 79% now. A single wave from a shopping site proves little; the same site's funnel tripling its electric share inside nine months is harder to dismiss.
The contrast with independent research cuts the other way. Three weeks ago TeslAnt covered a supplier lobby's YouGov work putting European BEV purchase intent at 8%, against registrations then running at 20.7%. Carwow's 66.4% and CLEPA's 8% are not measuring the same population. Having both is a reminder that intent surveys in this market are worth very little in absolute terms and something in direction.
The delivery-time finding is the one with teeth
Sixty percent of respondents said a short delivery time is important to them. Carwow then asked what they would do facing a wait of seven months or more:
| On a seven-month-plus wait | Share |
|---|---|
| Switch to an electric car available sooner | 40% |
| Wait it out | 38.1% |
| Consider a petrol car instead | 11.4% |
| Postpone the purchase | 10.5% |
Read that top row carefully. It is not 40% abandoning electric cars — it is 40% abandoning a particular electric car and buying a different one that can be delivered. Brand loyalty loses to availability, and it loses within the EV segment rather than out of it.
Why this matters for Tesla in Europe's biggest EV market
Because availability is one of the few structural advantages Tesla still holds in its largest European market, and this survey prices it.
Tesla sells from inventory and from Grünheide, with delivery in Germany routinely quoted in weeks. Several German volume manufacturers quote configured-to-order waits measured in months. If two fifths of buyers will change brand rather than wait past seven months, a short quoted lead time converts directly into orders that were not originally Tesla's to win.
The same logic cuts the other way on price. Nothing in this survey says buyers will pay more for speed; it says they will switch to another electric car that arrives sooner. That puts the advantage under pressure from anyone with stock on the ground — which is most of the market now that European EV inventories have built up.
Fuel prices, meanwhile, are a tailwind nobody in the industry controls. They are also the reason to treat the 57.8% with some caution: sentiment that moves with the pump price moves back when the pump price does, and the BDEW survey work on German charging behaviour is a reminder that what drivers say about running costs and what they actually do at a charger are different datasets.