There is a lot of talk about traffic reversal, but the reality is different. In 2022, the Federal Statistical Office counted more cars than ever before. There were 583 cars for every 1,000 inhabitants – a new record. “The density of cars has increased steadily over the past decade,” the authority said. In 2012 the figure was still 534 cars per 1,000 inhabitants.
The regional differences are large: last year the density was highest in the western Länder of Saarland (660 cars per 1000 inhabitants), Rhineland-Palatinate (634) and Bavaria (625). The city-states of Berlin (338), Hamburg (439) and Bremen (443) recorded the lowest values - “among other things due to a particularly dense public transport network”, as the statisticians explained. Berlin is the only federal state where the number of cars has decreased in the last ten years. While in 2012 there were 342 cars per 1,000 inhabitants in the federal capital, last year there were only 338.
According to data from the Federal Motor Transport Authority, 48.8 million passenger cars have been registered in Germany since 1 January 2023, a figure never seen before. According to calculations, more than three quarters (78%) of private households owned at least one car last year. The trend is towards a second or third car: in ten years the share of households with two cars has increased from 24.5 to 27%, that of households with three or more cars from 4.1 to 6.2%.
In the last ten years the number has also increased in all other countries of the European Union (EU). In the EU comparison Germany is last in eighth place. According to data from the European statistical authority Eurostat, at the beginning of the year 2021/2022 the largest number of cars in relation to the population was in Poland (687), Luxembourg (681) and Italy (675). The lowest car density was recorded in Romania (400), Latvia (404) and Bulgaria (414).
