Volkswagen Group are making some headway in the EV space globally. What about in Malaysia?
The Volkswagen Group has announced that its EV deliveries have increased by 48% year-on-year in the first half of 2023. Europe and the US have been areas of massive growth with a 68% and 76% increase in EV sales respectively. Unfortunately, China’s appetite for VW Group EVs has shrunk somewhat with a 1.6% drop in sales year-on-year. This has been picked up in all other markets (Rest of the World) where sales of VW Group BEVs have risen by 55.3%.
Admittedly, growth percentage numbers only tell a part of the story. While VW Group EV sales have indeed been strong in Europe with 217,100 units sold in the first six months of 2023 alone, the numbers are a lot lower elsewhere. China’s the group’s second biggest market for this segment despite the reduction in volume – 62,400 of their EVs were sold there this year up to the end of June.
In the USA, VW Group sold just 29,800 EVs there so far. In comparison, Tesla is estimated to have sold ten times as many EVs in the USA in the first half of 2023. Overall, 2023 has been good for Volkswagen Group EV sales so far though, but we wonder if they will fight equally hard in every market for a share of sales.
So far, the only Volkswagen Group EV that sells here is the Porsche Taycan. The Audi Q8 e-tron and e-tron GT models were only launched here in June. Volkswagen itself is completely unrepresented in the EV space even though they could benefit from the EV tax exemption with any number of fully-imported EVs. On the Volkswagen UK website, they have the following EV models available:
- ID.3
- ID.4 / ID.4 GTX
- ID.5 / ID.5 GTX
- ID.Buzz
We have heard that the ID.Buzz will be coming to Malaysia soon, but with Tesla’s Model Y launch today, the pool of potential Malaysian EV buyers will be shrinking rapidly. That being said, the ID.Buzz is an extremely unique product and it will definitely attract buyers here. To us though, Volkswagen may have to start pushing the rest of their EV products a little harder and faster before rivals from China completely saturate the lower end of the market.
