Yesterday we announced that Volkswagen Passenger Cars delivered 6 million cars over the course of 2014, which was an impressive figure for the German brand. But of course Volkswagen Group consists of more than merely Volkswagen Passenger Cars, much like Toyota has numerous sub brands like Lexus and Hino.
Volkswagen Group’s Strategy 2018 was formulated as a target for the group to hit in order to become a global economic and environmental leader amongst automotive manufacturers. It consists of four distinct goals, but the one most pertinent here is the sale of more than 10 million units per year as a group total. Naturally the one to beat is Toyota, which hit the 10 million unit mark back in 2013 and is continuing to surge (total 2014 sales figures for Toyota haven’t been released yet).
For 2014, Volkswagen Group has managed to breach the 10 million unit mark, increasing by 4.2 percent over 2013 for a total of 10.14 million vehicles. This also means that over the course of 10 years, Volkswagen Group has managed to double their vehicle sales- although this comes with the buying out of other sub brands.
The North American market has been steady with only a 0.2 percent increase, but the group took a large hit in South America where sales fell by 19.8 percent. Europe saw steady gains of between 0.4 and 7.2 percent. The largest jump would be the Asia-Pacific region, with an 11.3 percent increase in sales.
As mentioned before, Volkswagen Passenger Cars managed to push past the 6 million unit mark, but how have the other brands within the group fared? Audi managed to kick out 1.74 million units, 10.5 percent more than through 2013. Porsche also saw a large jump in sales to 189,800 units, likely due to the introduction of the Macan. SKODA finally achieved over a million units, increasing by 12.7 percent over the previous year. In contrast, heavy vehicle sales dropped by 5.4 percent through 2014- attributed to weaker developments in the prime markets of Europe, Russia and South America.
