Germany’s carmakers kept their production in 2025 largely at the previous-year level, but their association VDA expects a decline in 2026, due to overall economic weakness. The association points at the growing share of electric car production, which it says will continue this year.
Domestic passenger car production in 2025 was 2% above the year-earlier level, at 4.15 million units. This marks the third consecutive year that domestic passenger car production has remained at roughly the same level, Kallanish hears from VDA. However, it remains significantly below pre-crisis levels. The 2025 output was still 11% lower than in 2019, the last year before the pandemic.
In December, 263,500 passenger cars were produced in Germany, representing a strong year-on-year increase of 17%. To put this in perspective, however, December 2024 was extremely weak and saw the lowest December production figure since German reunification, VDA notes.
In terms of order activity, in 2025 total order intake was 2% lower than in the previous year. The trend was more pronounced in December, which was 8% below December 2024. For car production in 2026, VDA predicts a slight decline of 1% to 4.11m units.
The total number of electric cars produced in Germany in the first 11 months of 2025 came to almost 1.56m. This already represents over 200,000 units more than in the entire year of 2024, which was the previous record year for domestic e-car production.
“The German automotive industry is continuing to accelerate its efforts in e-mobility, and Germany is consolidating its position as the world’s second-largest production location for electric cars,” says VDA president Hildegard Müller. “It is now crucial that policymakers further improve the framework conditions for e-mobility.”
