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There are more and more cars on the streets of the West: In the meantime, well over 10 million cars are registered in North Rhine-Westphalia.
At the beginning of October, despite the temporary closure of car dealerships and discussions about less car traffic, it was almost 100,000 vehicles more than at the beginning of 2020. The number of new registrations was also high in October and November and roughly matched the figures for the same months of the previous year.
The car density in the most populous federal state remains high. At the beginning of the year, according to figures from the State Statistical Office, there were 570 cars for every 1000 inhabitants.
The high number of cars is noticeable in the environmental balance sheet: According to the State Office for the Environment, Nature and Consumer Protection (Lanuv), greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector in North Rhine-Westphalia increased slightly after a few years with a downward trend from 2018 to 2019. More recent figures are not available.
One reason is the increase in new vehicle registrations, according to the state government’s new climate protection report. Road traffic accounts for 90 percent of the emissions from the transport sector. In turn, cars are responsible for almost 71 percent of pollutant emissions from road traffic.
The state government is therefore relying on the expansion of electromobility. Every 20th car that is newly registered in North Rhine-Westphalia is now a battery vehicle, according to the climate report. In October 2020, more than 44,000 electric cars were registered nationwide – a good twice as many as a year earlier.
By the end of the year, the North Rhine-Westphalia Ministry of Economics was expecting well over 50,000 battery vehicles in the state.
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