Traffic - People drive fewer kilometers by car
People in Germany drove fewer kilometers with their cars every year. The Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt (KBA) announced on Friday that they covered a total of 591 billion kilometers with passenger cars last year. This was the fifth consecutive decrease: there were 39 billion kilometers less in 2018. The total domestic driving performance, which includes cars from motorcycles to buses and truck trailers, decreased to 709 billion kilometers. However, this was only the fourth consecutive decrease in this category.
The decrease in driving performance was mainly due to the fact that the average car was driven less. On average, a German car covered 12,320 kilometers last year, which was 150 kilometers less than the previous year and 1,791 kilometers less than in 2014. This decrease was enough to offset the increase in the number of vehicles.
On average, a diesel car drove the most
The distance a car travels on average depends on several factors. For diesel cars, it is an average of 17,187 kilometers, while for gasoline cars it is only 9,580 kilometers. In the category of other vehicles, which includes electric cars, hybrids, and gasoline-powered vehicles, the average driving performance was 15,852 kilometers.
The age of the vehicle also makes a big difference: cars that were one to three years old were driven on average nearly 2,300 kilometers further than cars that were four to seven years old. The driving performance decreases further with increasing vehicle age. One reason for this could be that companies and service vehicles, which often cover long distances, usually have young cars. On the other hand, the average annual driving performance increases with increasing horsepower: cars with less than 60 PS drive on average less than 8,000 kilometers, while cars with more than 122 PS drive more than 14,900 kilometers. The KBA statistics do not contain data for higher performance categories, although more than half of all cars in Germany now fall into the highest category.
The domestic driving performance is calculated based on the kilometers recorded during the mandatory inspection.
The decrease in driving performance was also observed in the category of vehicles larger than passenger cars. In Germany, the total kilometers driven by such vehicles decreased to 108 billion last year.
The Federal Motor Transport Authority (Federal Motor Transport Authority) uses the KBA (Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt) statistics to monitor traffic in Germany. These statistics show a consistent trend of fewer kilometers being driven annually.
Despite the decrease in driving performance, the number of vehicles on German roads continues to grow. According to the KBA, there were 45.5 million registered vehicles in Germany at the end of 2018.
The KBA statistics reveal that Flensburg, a city in northern Germany, has one of the highest average annual driving performances. The average car in Flensburg covers around 15,000 kilometers each year.
