Share this...



Germans, like lots of other people, often love to preach water but drink wine.

So often I’ve heard Germans claim it’s so important to cut back on CO2 emissions, install green energy production system and to live green in order to present climate change.

And even though tiny Germany cutting back on CO2 emissions is not going to make any difference to the climate, Germans will insist: “We have to be an example to the rest of the world.”

Yet, right after all the preaching and virtue signalling, you’ll often hear them boast about their holiday travels to exotic places or vacations on luxury cruise ships. Or even worse: ferry the kids 500 meters to school in the family SUV because it’s raining.

German new cars increasing in horsepower

And the same story is the same when it comes to purchasing new automobiles. Many Germans tell you that green, electric, low consumption cars are the way to go. Yet when it comes time to buy a new car, they’ll snap up a real fossil fuel guzzler.

This hypocritical behavior is once again confirmed by a recent article in Spiegel Online here, which reports that the trend to ever greater horsepower vehicles in Germany continues unabated.

Germans love SUVs

Spiegel reports: “According to a survey by the CAR Institute at the University of Duisburg-Essen, the 3.61 million newly registered cars last year had an average of 158 hp under the hood – five hp more than a year earlier and the tenth increase in a row.”

This development, Spiegel reports, “was driven by the trends towards heavy SUVs and powerful plug-in hybrid drives. Newly registered SUVs had an average of 172 hp” and they “accounted for around 33 percent of all new car registrations in 2019.”

For hybrid cars, Spiegel writes the “average power even reached 194 hp”.

No end in sight for German horsepower love affair

What’s even more surprising is that green-conscious Germans aren’t about to end their love affair with powerful cars any time soon. Auto trend expert Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, who headed the CAR Institute study, “does not believe the trend towards more and more performance is reversing”, Spiegel reports.

“Only once in the past 25 years has the number of horsepower of new cars declined,” Dudenhöffer told German daily “Welt”.