German e-bus market grew 20% in 2023: MAN, Mercedes and Ebusco on the podium. The total market increased 12.5%

The German bus and coach market grew 12.5% in 2023 according to figures by the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) reported by German trade media omnibus.news. Last year 753 new electric buses over 8 ton were registered, growing 20% 632 on 2022. In 2021 the figure was 555.

And big news are emerging from the podium of the electric bus market in the country, where MAN overtakes Mercedes thanks to 246 registered Lion’s City E. However Daimler Buses follow closely with 231 eCitaro. Third player on the podium is also new: here, still according to omnibus.news reporting based on Chatrou CME Solutions’ figures, we found Ebusco with 90 e-buses registered in Berlin following an order landed in late 2021.

2023 has been a booming year for the Italian market where after the 2,351 number plates registered during 2022, registrations of buses over 8 ton hit the figure of 4,043 in 2023. The growth on 2022 is impressive: +72%. Spanish market also grew a lot: 54% compared to 2022 data, with 3,749 buses registered in 2023.

Germany, the bus market grew 12.5% in 2023

A total of 5,493 new buses and coaches (over 3.5 tons) were newly registered in Germany from January to December, compared to 4,883 in 2022. However, 2021 data were much higher: 6,474 new buses and coaches were registered in that year. The market, as omnibus.news notes, has not yet recovered from the pandemic, especially the coach market.

Omnibus.news notes that “the German government stated that only around 4.5 per cent of all buses in public transport currently have an electric drive. If we focus on electric buses >8 tonnes, the figure is actually only 3.9 per cent, as there were 2,562 electric buses >8 tonnes in Germany at the end of the year”.

Which were the market leader of the German 2023 bus and coach market (referring then to the general market, not the e-bus segment)? The media reports that Daimler Buses, MAN and Iveco Bus share the winner’s podium.

On an article we published on Sustainable Bus Magazine May 2023, we found that “by 2022, the five main European markets had lost a quarter of their volumes compared to 2019 (…). In Germany the sum of registrations in the three years 2020, 2021 and 2022 is slightly higher than the 2019 figure. In 2022, a thousand coaches were ‘left behind’ compared to 2019. Only the United Kingdom, among the markets analysed, suffered a comparable decline, as we will see shortly”.