A technician repairs a VW sign on an assembly line for the electric ID of German automaker Volkswagen. 3 car in Dresden, Germany on June 8, 2021.
Matthias Ritschel | Reuters
Volkswagen said Tuesday that several of its battery-electric models, including the Porsche Taycan, are already sold out for 2022, and that strong consumer demand is helping its EV efforts become as profitable as its internal combustion engine line, faster than expected.
Volkswagen has been working on an aggressive EV transition plan for several years, aiming for EVs to account for half of its global production by 2030. is already bearing fruit. Volkswagen was the leading seller of electric vehicles in Europe, holding about 25% of the market. In the US, it was second behind Tesla with a share of about 7.5% last year.
Volkswagen’s share of the Chinese EV market is still relatively small, but it is growing rapidly. The group’s EV deliveries in the country quadrupled last year to nearly 93,000, and VW expects that figure to double again in 2022.
“We’re seeing better scale, we’re seeing better margins, we’re seeing strong consumer demand,” Chief Financial Officer Arno Antlitz told reporters during a phone call ahead of the company’s annual meeting on Tuesday. “Initially we thought it would take two or three years before we see [profit] parity of internal combustion engines and battery electric vehicles.
Some of this “better scale” is courtesy of rival Ford Motor Company. On Monday, Ford and VW announced that two electric Fords built on the Volkswagen EV architecture will now be produced for the European market, with the pair expected to produce around 1.2 million vehicles over a six-year period starting in 2023. This is about double what was originally planned. .
Volkswagen and Ford have been collaborating on electric vehicles, autonomous driving and other major initiatives since 2019.
In a separate update to investors ahead of the annual meeting, VW revealed that its next-generation electric vehicle platform will be launched in 2026 alongside a new VW-branded electric sedan codenamed Trinity.
The Trinity sedan will be built at a new, state-of-the-art facility adjacent to the VW headquarters campus in Wolfsburg, Germany. The new facility will use advanced manufacturing methods and serve as a plan to gradually transition VW factories around the world to electric vehicle production.
The company unveiled its ID last week. The Buzz car, an electric version of the iconic minivan from the hippie era.
VW is also expanding its global charging network. The company said it has a total of about 10,000 high-speed charging points operating in the US, China and Europe, and plans to increase this number to 45,000 in three regions by 2025. About 10,000 of them will be in the US. He said he operates under the Electrify America brand, created as part of the VW Dieselgate deal.
VW currently expects its overall deliveries, including combustion engine models, to increase by 5-10% in 2022. But CEO Herbert Diess acknowledged that a Russian invasion of Ukraine could change that outlook. He said the company is shifting some of its production from Europe to North America and China in response to war-related supply chain disruptions.