Market analysis · Germany and Switzerland
Germany is pulling ahead on electric cars — and is still level with Switzerland
Two statements about the same data set, both correct: Germany is leaving Switzerland behind on the share of battery electric cars. And: both countries are electrifying their new car fleet at practically the same pace. How that fits together says more about the Swiss market than any single percentage.
The figures
The basis is the Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt for Germany and auto-schweiz for Switzerland, passenger cars in both cases, the same periods in both cases.
| BEV share of new registrations | Germany | Switzerland |
|---|---|---|
| First half of 2026 | 24,8 % | 23,7 % |
| January to August 2026 | 25,5 % | 23,9 % |
| July 2026 | 29,3 % | 25,4 % |
The gap is there, and it is widening: 1,1 percentage points over the half year, 1,6 over seven months, 3,9 in July alone. The Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt reports 78’609 newly registered electric cars for July, up 61,7 per cent on the same month a year earlier.
Why the gap should be read with caution
The drivers of the German surge are held to be the wider model range, fuel prices and above all the state purchase incentive. Switzerland has no such incentive. The growing gap therefore measures a political difference first and foremost — and political instruments expire, are cut back or rebuilt. A lead that hangs on a subsidy is not a structural lead.
A single month is a signal, not a trend. Three time slices pointing the same way are an indication, not a forecast.
The second look: practically level
Add up every vehicle with a plug from January to July — battery electric cars, plug-in hybrids, plus the vanishingly small number of fuel cell and range extender vehicles — and the picture changes: Germany reaches 36,6 per cent, Switzerland 36,4 per cent. Two tenths apart.
The share of vehicles that can run at least partly on electricity is therefore almost identical in both countries. Only the mix differs: in Germany 11,1 percentage points fall to plug-in hybrids, in Switzerland 12,4. Anyone comparing the BEV share alone is measuring a composition and calling it a shortfall.
Why the mix matters more to Switzerland than the ranking
A plug-in hybrid keeps filling up. For the mineral oil tax, levied in Switzerland as a fixed amount per litre, that is the decisive difference: a plug-in share of 36 per cent does not shrink the tax base by 36 per cent if a third of those vehicles still drives to the pump. How much more slowly the erosion actually runs is not something registration data can say — that would take reliable figures on the real electric share in plug-in hybrid operation, and those are professionally disputed.
Only the direction can be recorded: at the same degree of electrification, the Swiss new car fleet is weighted more heavily towards vehicles that continue to consume fuel. For the question of how quickly the mineral oil tax erodes, that is more relevant than the ranking on BEV share.
What Swiss buyers get out of it
The largest practical effect lies not in the percentages but in the absolute unit numbers. Germany newly registered around 446’615 battery electric cars from January to August 2026, Switzerland 32’426 — a factor of 13,8 between the two markets.
Some of these vehicles come to Switzerland, and how many is on record. From January to September 2026, 41’529 passenger cars previously registered abroad were imported — close to a quarter on top of new registrations in the same period. 21’425 of them came from Germany, a good half. 4’011 were battery electric, 1’768 of those from Germany. Not all of it is a used car: 875 of the German electric imports were brought in within six months of their first registration and are therefore direct imports of factory-new cars.
The time lag is the real finding. Between first registration in Germany and recording in Switzerland there is a median of 18 months across all drivetrains; for battery electric cars it is 6 months. Anyone waiting for German lease returns to fill the Swiss used market in three years is waiting for something that, with electric cars, has long been under way. For a purchase that means: supply is tighter than the German unit numbers suggest, but it builds up earlier than expected. Whether waiting is worth it hangs on price, battery condition and one’s own driving needs — not on supply volume alone. What kind of vehicles cross the border — origin, power, drivetrain — is covered in a separate piece on used imports.
A secondary finding that deserves attention
In Germany petrol cars accounted for 18,9 per cent of new registrations in July 2026, diesel for 11,8 per cent. Pure combustion engines together therefore 30,7 per cent — less than a third. Average CO2 emissions of new cars stood at 91,2 grams per kilometre, 15,1 per cent below the same month a year earlier. Anyone wanting to know how quickly a new car fleet is being rebuilt will find the harder yardstick here rather than in the BEV share.
What we do not know
- Whether the gap keeps opening. It hangs on a support instrument whose continuation is open.
- Whether the short time lag on electric cars holds. It may also mean that a lot of nearly new vehicles are leaving the German market right now — a process that can run dry.
- How high the real electric share is in plug-in hybrid operation — and with it, how much the Swiss difference in mix actually spares the mineral oil tax base.
We do not record these gaps in order to appear cautious, but because a figure we do not have is not replaced by an estimate either.
Sources: Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt, press release no. 29/2026 of 15 July 2026 and no. 32/2026 of 6 August 2026. auto-schweiz, new registration statistics MOFIS, cut-off date 31 July 2026. Used imports: ASTRA, Vehicle Registration Information System (IVZ), used import data set (GEBR.txt), data as at 1 August 2026. Drivetrain shares of Swiss new registrations: ASTRA, IVZ, monthly new registration data set.
On transparency: several values in this post appear in no publication in this form but are calculated by us from the official figures. The German value for January to July (446’615 electric cars, 25,5 per cent) is the sum of the half-year and the July release of the Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt; the same applies to the cumulated plug-in share of 36,6 per cent. The Swiss values for the half year and for July alone are calculated from our own month-by-month analysis of the auto-schweiz figures — auto-schweiz does not report them separately; the annual total of 32’426 vehicles is the official one. The used import figures are our own analysis of the IVZ raw extract: counted are passenger cars whose first registration lies abroad, and the time lag is the difference between that first registration and the recording in Switzerland. All of these values are simple additions, subtractions or counts of official figures and therefore contain no estimate — but they are calculations by wattradar and not statements by the authorities.
