Germany has really started rolling after the B196 driving license was introduced on January 1, 2020.

Since then, motorists have been allowed to drive scooters and light motorcycles with a displacement of up to 125 cc and a maximum of 15 hp without having to pass an additional test.

Requirements: Minimum age 25, five years of possession of a class B driver's license, 13.5 hours of theory and practice in a driving school.

The 125 permit, which includes comparable electric vehicles, is documented by entering the code number 196 for class B, hence the name.

Pleasure doesn't come cheap.

Anyone who gets away with 500 euros can count themselves lucky, 800 euros is not the upper end.

Nevertheless, in the past two years, more than 130,000 drivers have taken the opportunity to purchase the B196, as the Federal Motor Transport Authority recently announced.

Immediate consequences: pressure on the used market, sudden increase in the number of new registrations.

In 2020, it was up 82 percent to almost 34,000 units for light motorcycles and 108 percent to more than 31,000 units for scooters.

This level was roughly maintained in 2021, and in the first few months of 2022 things went up again with growth rates of around 30 percent.

It is all the more astonishing that these light, space-saving, economical vehicles still do not seem to play a role in discussions about urban mobility.

This becomes clear, among other things, from the fact that two-wheeler parking spaces in inner cities in this country are a rarity.

Nobody wants to block a car parking lot with their Vespa, but anyone who parks it somewhere else is often doing something illegal and has to hope for toleration.

Strange condition.