New registrations - Autos less commonly colored
In German streets, cars are getting increasingly colorless. In the first half of the year, unpainted colors White, Black, and Gray - including Silver - accounted for almost four fifths of the new car registrations in Germany, according to data from the Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt, as reported by dpa. This trend has been ongoing: in 2019, the colorless share was still over three quarters in the first half of the year, and it has been rising every year since then.
Gray, which includes Silver, is the most prevalent color, with a 33.1% share. Its share has increased by nearly three percentage points since 2019 and over six percentage points since 2014. Black follows with a 26.5% share. It has gained ground, but there is still a nearly two percentage point decrease compared to 2014, when it was the number one color. White is in third place with a 20.1% share, with fluctuations over the years being relatively minor.
Blue and Red are far behind
Classic colorful colors follow far behind, with no two-digit percentages reached. So, 8.7% of new registrations in the first half of the year were blue - a decrease from over 10.6% just three years ago. Red accounts for 4.8%, which has also seen a significant decrease recently. Green, with a current 2.9% share on the sixth rank, has shown significant improvement. It was only 1% five years ago. Conversely, Brown is almost completely gone. It accounted for 6% of new registrations ten years ago, but now only 0.5% remain.
Seat is the least colorful among brands
When considering brands with a minimum one percent share in new registrations, Seat has the least colorful offerings. 89.5% of Seat's new registrations in the first half of the year were black, gray/silver, or white. In second place are Mercedes and VW themselves with 86.8% and 84.5%, respectively. Nissan is the grayscale leader with 43.4% of its cars in this color, while Mercedes is the blackest with 37.8%. White is the current trend color for Tesla, with a 46.5% share of its new registrations.
Dacia is the greenest
Determining the brand with the most colorful offerings is not straightforward. While Fiat has the lowest percentage of unpainted colors at 45.8%, it has an almost 27% share of registrations whose color falls under "other" and cannot be categorized. Therefore, no definitive statement can be made. Excluding Fiat, Mazda and Mitsubishi are the most colorful, with over 60% of their registrations being unpainted. Interestingly, they are also the most frequent red brands, with 19.6% (Mitsubishi) and 18.8% (Mazda) shares. Hyundai and Peugeot share the lead in the blue category with a 14.1% share, and Dacia is the greenest brand with a 14.2% share.
Even among brands commonly associated with specific colors, the registration statistics sometimes tell a different story. Ferrari red may be a fixed expression, but in terms of new registrations, Black is now the most common color for the sports car brand.
The trend of colorless cars in traffic, led by Gray and Black, is monitored by the Federal Transport Office in Germany. This shift in the automobile industry has also impacted new Mercedes-Benz registrations, with gray and silver accounting for a substantial share. The Automatic release of these statistics plays a crucial role in understanding the evolving preferences in the German Automotive market, such as the increasing popularity of gray and the decrease in popularity of blue and red. Flensburg, as a part of Germany, is also affected by these trends in colors for new vehicle registrations.
