BERLIN, May 19 -- Germany produced 86 percent more purely electric vehicles in 2021 than a year earlier and 268 percent more than in 2019, the German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) said on Thursday.

The approximately 328,000 purely electrically powered cars produced last year in the country were worth 13.7 billion euros (14.5 billion U.S. dollars), it said.

"Electric mobility is booming -- also due to the government's financial incentive for the purchase of electric vehicles and the tax reliefs granted," Destatis noted.

The Volkswagen Group, the country's largest carmaker, saw global deliveries of its battery electric vehicles (BEVs) increase by 97 percent to 263,000 units in 2021. "Battery and charging will become our core competence and source of revenue," Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Herbert Diess said.

A purchase premium for electric vehicles of up to 9,000 euros has recently been extended until the end of 2022 to support the government target of at least 15 million all-electric cars on German roads by 2030, up from just above 600,000 at the start of the year.

Sales of electric cars in the five largest markets in western Europe -- Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Spain -- in April rose by only 8 percent year-on-year, according to consulting firm Ernst & Young (EY). Within one year, the market share of electric and plug-in hybrids combined rose from 14.4 percent to 17.5 percent.

Although sales of new electric cars were developing better than those of internal combustion vehicles, "the chip crisis has arrived in the electric segment," warned Peter Fuss, partner at EY. The development could be "significantly more positive" if corresponding vehicles were available. (1 euro = 1.06 U.S. dollar)

  - Xinhua