BOCHUM/FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) - On the German market for new cars, prices for comparable models with an electric drive or combustion engine are slowly converging. The still significant price difference is narrowing, as the private Car Institute found in its regular discount study for July.

This is based on the so-called transaction prices, i.e. the amounts that customers actually have to pay for a new car after deducting all discounts from the list price. Since April, these prices have fallen by 4 percent for the 15 most popular electric cars, while they have risen by 5 percent for combustion engines.

The price differences are still considerable, says study director Ferdinand Dudenhoffer. For example, a VW Golf with a 1.5-liter combustion engine still costs €9,220 less than its electric brother, the ID3, with a calculated transaction price of €23,443. For the Opel Corsa, the difference is even more than 13,600 euros to the disadvantage of the battery model.

Dudenhoffer does not initially see a triumphant advance by Chinese suppliers in the market for electric cars. List prices are often not mentioned on the websites, data and information are "often too insubstantial". And the Chinese couldn't "do magic" with the prices either. This is shown by the price comparison of a model from the manufacturer MG, which is almost 13,000 euros more expensive in the battery version than the combustion engine. Dudenhoffer also finds it remarkable that Tesla has offered a direct discount of 6,000 euros on the Model Y for the first time. There are probably larger stocks here./ceb/DP/zb