Sometimes history doesn’t just repeat itself once. Sometimes it even repeats itself twice. Almost exactly 13 years ago, numerous media outlets ran the headline “The return of the MPV”. After family-friendly MPVs (multipurpose vehicles) such as Renault Espace, Chrysler Voyager and later VW Sharan enjoyed unprecedented sales success from the mid-1980s onwards, enthusiasm waned considerably from the mid-2000s onwards. One […]
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When e-mobility started to gain momentum in the early 2010s, electric vehicles with range extenders (EREV) were supposed to take away the worry of breaking down prematurely due to an empty battery. It was actually a good idea. Opel launched one of the first EREVs on the German market in 2012 with the Ampera. It could drive up to 80 […]
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Things are not going well for the German car industry at the moment. Sales have plummeted – especially on the Chinese market. And although sales of electric cars appear to be slowly stabilizing, they were down last year. Especially in Germany. Here alone, more than a quarter fewer fully electric vehicles were sold in 2024 than in the previous year. […]
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For decades, there was one main trend in cars: they were getting bigger and heavier. Today, the average car weighs around one and a half tons. This weight increase isn’t solely due to larger vehicle sizes; rising demands for comfort and stringent safety requirements also contribute to this trend. This pattern holds true for electric cars as well. They are […]
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For manufacturers, cars need to be profitable. Anything that is not profitable or sells poorly is cut from the range (Convertibles for example are slowly running out of air). Sales of small cars or microcars have been falling noticeably for several years now. The reason: stricter emission limits and mandatory assistance systems for greater safety make it necessary to install […]
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Imagine that the Google Play Store gets in touch with you on your cell phone. The message: Please go to the nearest mobile store, an update for the Chrome app is available now and can be installed there. Sounds absurd, doesn’t it? But that’s exactly what numerous car manufacturers are still asking their customers to do. Today’s vehicles are basically […]
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Until the beginning of the 1990s, the world of cars was quite a manageable affair, seeing that back then, there were something like 100 different vehicle variants. But then things took off. Less than 25 years later, more than 3,000 vehicle types were on offer in Germany – spread across various models, styles and engine types. But many of them […]
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When it comes to buying a new car, most German car buyers would probably say it’s too expensive and opt for a used car. No surprise, since for years about two thirds of all cars traded in Germany have been used cars. The reason is simple: prices for new cars have been rising distinctly for decades. The first VW Golf’s […]
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Germans are beginning to like the electric car. Just recently, the E-Mobility Study 2020 done by the energy provider e.on found out that 64 percent of those surveyed could imagine buying an e-car. That was different not long ago. Of course, also money is a factor, as the increase of incentives provided by the government has certainly contributed to this […]
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Until recently, electric mobility in Europe – except for Norway – was still in a kind of twilight state. Fearing lack of range and scepticism about technology were the main reasons for this reluctance. Even Car-Nation Germany continued to prefer traditional drives. Ten years ago, the German government forecasted that one million electric cars were to be driven in Germany […]
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