Sometimes, when I see a car on the roadside that has obviously been parked there for a long time (like the one in the picture above), I have to think about my very last car.
I had moved to Berlin some months before and wanted to use the car after a while. But I couldn't find it anymore. I just couldn't remember where I had parked it. Finally, I found the car - and sold it. I‘ve never shed any tears over this sale.
Before I moved to Berlin, I had lived in the countryside (at the beautiful Lake of Constance). The car had been my best friend. It took me anywhere I wanted to go. On vacation to Italy, to the city of my childhood, to my girlfriend. The car gave me autonomy and freedom. I had loved my car.
Why am I telling this?
The car has become an object of a cultural fight here in Germany, and I guess not only here.
On the one hand, there are those who despise cars. Who see them as backward and ruthless objects of mobility. Cars take up too much space, use up too many resources and are partly responsible for climate change, they say.
On the other hand, many see their car as an enabler of individual life. Especially here in East Germany, where I live, more than 30 years after the end of the communist GDR, the car still seems to symbolise freedom, a materialised sign of freedom.
In the GDR, many had to wait decades before they could buy a car. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, it became possible to buy one literally overnight.
In the territory of the former GDR, in the first five years after reunification, seven million cars changed hands (out of a total population of around 17 million). Perhaps no product has combined the desire for wealth and freedom better than cars.
This desire seems to be unbroken.
Despite all the stories about mobility change, in the past ten years, the number of cars in Germany has increased steadily: in 2021, there were 580 cars for every 1,000 inhabitants – a record value (see chart below).
And yes, in big German cities like Berlin and Hamburg, the number of cars per 1000 inhabitants is significantly lower than average (in Berlin it is around 330), but the number has nevertheless increased there in recent years (albeit only slightly).
The last figures for today refer to the comparison with Europe.
Even if one might assume, Germany is not on top regarding the number of cars in relation to the number of inhabitants.
According to data from the EU statistical authority Eurostat, most cars are in Luxembourg (682), Italy (670) and Poland (664). On the other end, car density is lowest in Romania (379), Latvia (390) and Hungary (403). However, the Eastern European EU countries record the highest growth rates in terms of the number of cars per 1000 inhabitants: in Romania, it increased by 77 per cent between 2010 and 2020; in Poland, Estonia and Slovakia it increased by almost half.
I will not participate in this trend. I got used to public transport or riding the bike. And for long distances, I love to travel by train. Above all, I never want to have to look for my car in a big city like Berlin again. ;-)
Onwards,
Johannes Eber
sources:
https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2022/09/PD22_N058_51.html