2022 was a mixed year at best for the auto industry. Stress in supply chains, congestion in production – the VW Group is no exception. But there is a positive trend.
Supply bottlenecks for electronics and the resulting production problems also caused considerable problems for the Volkswagen Group in the past year. The second largest car group was able to sell significantly fewer vehicles overall than in 2021. However, sales of electric models improved again noticeably, as the Wolfsburg-based company announced on Thursday.
Global deliveries were down 7 percent year-over-year when considering all brands and regions over the full 12 months. On this basis, the VW group got rid of around 8.26 million vehicles. In the already difficult second Corona year before that, there were still around 8.88 million units.
The only growth region in 2022 was Asia-Pacific – if you exclude the most important market, China, where it fell by 3.6 percent, in particular due to Covid lockdowns. However, business stabilized noticeably over the course of the year. Global sales for December were up 18.1 percent, with increases of nearly 23 percent in China and 18 percent in Western Europe. In Germany, the group sold 3.8 percent more cars and came to a total of over a million. Global deliveries leveled off in the fourth quarter at plus 14.3 percent.
effects of the war felt
The lack of chips and the economic upheavals caused by the latest corona restrictions in the People’s Republic had recently eased somewhat. The situation in the conflict region of Central and Eastern Europe remained bleak. There, group sales in 2022 ended up almost a third below the previous year’s level, and at the end they remained almost 22 percent in the red in December. An additional effect of the war in Ukraine on the auto industry was that important parts from there, such as cable harnesses, now had to be procured elsewhere.
If you only look at vehicles with electric drives, the overall picture looks more positive. Here, the VW group brands achieved an increase of a good 26 percent to over 572,000 vehicles compared to the previous year.
The Volkswagen Group explained that 6.9 percent of all cars delivered were pure electric vehicles – 1.8 percentage points more than in 2021. The share should increase from 11 percent this year to 20 percent in 2025 to a good 50 percent by 2030.
In relative terms, sales of electronics increased particularly strongly in China last year, by more than two-thirds. Volkswagen is still starting from a comparatively low level and initially had some starting problems with the ID series of its core brand.
A quarter more purely electric cars worldwide
In 2022, VW passenger cars brought almost 24 percent more purely electric cars to customers worldwide. At Audi, the increase was around 44 percent, while the light VW commercial vehicles and Seat/Cupra even more than doubled. Porsche, on the other hand, delivered around 16 percent fewer cars with electric motors.
If you add up all drive forms, the Stuttgart sports and off-road vehicle manufacturer – boss Oliver Blume has also been managing the VW Group since autumn – did better: Deliveries climbed slightly by 2.6 percent to almost 310,000 vehicles over the entire crisis year 2022. In addition to the added value for the premium brands Bentley and Lamborghini, Porsche was the only car subsidiary to achieve growth. The core brand VW slipped by 6.8 percent worldwide to around 4.56 million vehicles delivered. The main division with battery cars also made progress: around 325,000 electric units sold meant growth of 23.6 percent.
Parts of Porsche AG have been listed on the stock exchange since the end of September, which should increase the value of the entire Volkswagen Group in the medium term. The US truck manufacturer Navistar achieved a significant increase in heavy commercial vehicles – it has only been in the group since 2021.
In the new year, VW expects the supply to remain subject to fluctuations. Delivery bottlenecks would “probably gradually improve over the course of the year,” estimates sales manager Hildegard Wortmann. The lack of microchips had caused many production shifts to be canceled by car manufacturers in 2022. In Germany, short-time work was often the result, and large parts of the plant were idle on several occasions.
Source: Stern
Jane Stock is a technology author, who has written for 24 Hours World. She writes about the latest in technology news and trends, and is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve his audience’s experience.
