Volkswagen Group’s EV deliveries enjoy bumper start to 2022
The Volkswagen Group successfully continued its global electric offensive in the first quarter, lifting deliveries of all-electric vehicles by 65% year-on-year.
Despite supply bottlenecks for semiconductors and wire harnesses, Volkswagen confirmed that 99,100 BEVs had been handed over to customers by the end of March, up from 60,000 in the opening quarter of the previous year. The biggest increase was seen in China, where 28,800 customers took delivery of a BEV manufactured by a Group brand – a more than four-fold increase versus the prior-year period.
In terms of BEV deliveries by region, Europe was still clearly in the lead, with 58,400 vehicles (share of 59%) in the first three months. In the USA, the Group handed over 7,900 BEVs to customers, which corresponded to 8% of its global BEV deliveries. In China 28,800 BEVs had been delivered by the end of March, more than four times as many as in the first quarter of 2021. This represents 29% of the Group’s worldwide BEV deliveries.
By the end of March, the core brand Volkswagen delivered 53,400 BEVs to customers (share of 54%). This was followed by Audi with 24,200 vehicles (share of 24%), Porsche with 9,500 vehicles (share of 10%), ŠKODA with 8,800 vehicles (share of 9%) and SEAT/CUPRA with 2,200 vehicles (share of 2%).
Volkswagen’s ID.4 all-electric SUV topped the charts for the best-selling BEV model in the period, ahead of the ID.3, Audi’s Q4 e-tron and its e-tron model, as well as the Porsche Taycan.
Volkswagen’s rise in EV sales mirrors the growth of electric vehicles in the UK, with March seeing the highest volume of EV registrations ever recorded in a single month.
March was the best month ever for electric vehicle sales, according to the latest figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), with 39,315 new zero emission cars sold last month, representing an increase of 78.7% on last year. This means that more electric vehicles were registered in March 2022 than during the entirety of 2019.