The pandemic took a serious toll on the VW Group’s output, but the automaker’s 2023 sales figures prove it has bounced back in style. Group deliveries were up 12 percent to 9.24 million last year as VW recovered from supply chain holdups, that number not quite matching a pre-pandemic total of 9.3 million units, but comfortably cruising past the 8.3 million cars churned out in 2022 when VW was struggling to cope with the chip crisis and fallout from the war in Ukraine.
VW won’t release full details of each brand’s performance until the end of this week, but it has revealed that sales at the VW brand hit 4.87 million. Again, that’s still lower than pre-pandemic levels, but an increase of 6.7 percent on the 4.56 million cars it shifted in 2022 is ample excuse for Wolfsburg execs to be popping some champagne corks this week. SUVs accounted for more than half of those cars in Europe and an incredible 81 percent in the U.S.
And there was more good news on the EV front. VW appeared to be struggling with lower-than-expected demand for its electric cars during 2023 and was even forced to temporarily pause production of the ID.3 in Germany to prevent unsold cars from piling up. But the 2023 data reveals that sales of VW-branded electric cars still climbed by 21.1 percent to 394,000, while demand for EVs across the VW Group grew by 35 percent to 770,000 units.
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The picture looks less rosy when you consider VW’s China activities. Sales there climbed by 1.6 percent, but the market as a whole grew by 5.6 percent confirming that VW is losing ground to both Tesla and increasingly strong local competition from the likes of BYD. And while VW’s global figures speak of a successful year, it won’t be good enough to prevent Toyota from retaining its position as the world’s biggest automaker. VW wore that crown from 2016-2019, but Toyota (which is still to declare final 2023 figures) stole it back in 2020, has kept a tight hold on it since, and doesn’t look like it’s about to let go, judging by interim 2023 figures.