The Volkswagen Group experiences lower-than-expected demand and sales of electric cars, but intends to maintain its pricing to prioritize margins and profitability.
In the nine-month financial report, the company revealed that its order bank in Western Europe includes 1.4 million vehicles, including around 150,000 all-electric ones. This is a very interesting data point because a year ago the company had around 300,000 all-electric car orders on hand. That's a pretty deep 50 percent decrease.
Arno Antlitz, CFO & COO of Volkswagen Group, noted that orders increased slowly in Q3, compared to the first half of the year, and this trend is expected to continue. This is a positive, but only time will tell whether this growth will be strong enough to enable the company to expand its electric car business.
Let's recall that the Volkswagen Group's BEV sales in the first nine months of the year amounted to 531,500 (up 45 percent year-over-year), which represents about 7.9 percent of the total volume. Europe accounts for 64 percent of all VW Group's BEV sales (341,100), which means that any issues in Europe will have a tremendous impact on the overall results.
The Volkswagen Group has set a target to achieve 8-10 percent BEV share in 2023, and with 9.0 percent in Q3, it seems that the company is gradually moving towards the goal.
In Western Europe, this should not be difficult to achieve. Even the recently unveiled order bank numbers, reveal 150,000 BEVs out of 1.4 million vehicles, which means more than one in 10 new vehicle orders are all-electric.
Interesting things are happening in China, where Volkswagen is losing market share. Arno Antlitz expects that it will continue over the next one to two years until the new models, developed in partnership with XPeng, hit the market.
