Volkswagen Group reports sales growth for first half of 2023

Hanover, Jul. 15, (dpa/GNA) – Car sales for German auto giant Volkswagen Group (VW) continued to outpace last year but slowed in June, with the company on Friday reporting that sales in the first half of the year are up 12.8% compared to 2022.

The company attributed sales growth largely to a better supply of parts compared to last year when delivery bottlenecks and supply chain issues hit production.

The VW Group sold 847,600 vehicles in June from its various brands, the company reported on Friday. That marked a 5.7% increase in sales in June 2022. During the first six months of the year, VW sold a total of 4.372 million vehicles.

Compared to the previous month, however, sales growth weakened noticeably. In May, the company’s various brands reported 16% higher sales than in the previous year.

Volkswagen started the year with a significant backlog of orders due to last year’s supply bottlenecks. That helped drive sales higher initially – but the order backlog is now reportedly being worked off and delivery times have been significantly reduced.

New business, on the other hand, was a cause for concern, especially for electric vehicles, which recently accounted for 7.4% of overall deliveries for the VW Group.

“We see that electro-mobility is unfortunately not accepted in the way we all – including politicians – imagined,” said Daniela Cavallo, head of the works council for VW, told the Braunschweiger Zeitung newspaper on Friday. She said high acquisition costs, falling subsidies and high electricity prices all helped drive down demand for electric vehicles.

The outlook for electric vehicle sales is improving, however, said Hildegard Wortmann, a board member at VW Group subsidiary Audi.

“Since May, we have again seen an improved trend in incoming orders here, after a certain reluctance on the part of our customers at the start of the year due to reduced subsidy programs, partly long waiting times and high inflation,” Wortmann said in a company statement.

She said improved delivery times should keep the trend pointing upward.

Sales for VW increased especially in Western Europe, where the company’s brands sold a total of 1.64 million vehicles in the first half of the year – almost 27% more than a year earlier.

Sales in Western Europe also remained strong in June, with more than 30% more vehicles sold than in June 2022.

On the other hand, sales in China, VW’s most important market, turned negative in June. Deliveries fell by 14.5% compared to the previous year.

VW said the negative monthly figure in China was due to the end of tax incentives there which had boosted vehicle sales in June 2022.

In the first half of the year overall, VW’s sales in China were 1.2% below the previous year’s level.

The VW Group’s core brand Volkswagen lagged behind other brands, with sales in the first half rising only 7.2%. Volkswagen sales in June turned negative, dropping 2.4% below June 2022.

By comparison, some of the company’s other brands saw strong sales growth compared to 2022: up 28.1% for Seat/Cupra, 19.9% for Škoda, 15.5% for Audi and 14.7% for Porsche.

Audi in particular gained market share in its three-way rivalry with German luxury competitors BMW and Mercedes Benz, although total Audi vehicle sales remain behind the others. Sales for the BMW brand grew by just 4.7% in the first half of the year, and by 6% at Mercedes-Benz.

GNA