All Press Releases

The trade magazine auto motor und sport chose the winners of its “Best Cars 2019” Reader’s Choice Awards in Stuttgart today. Three models of the Volkswagen brand, the up!, Polo and Golf, were among the winners. The award, one of the top automotive awards of the year, was received by Volkswagen’s Brand Board of Management members Ralf Brandstätter (Chief Operating Officer), Dr Frank Welsch (Development) and Jürgen Stackmann (Sales, Marketing and After Sales).

Volkswagen is bringing a legend back to life! At the beginning of March, the Wolfsburg-based Group will reveal the first fully electric version of a new buggy. Taking its cues from popular American dune buggies, the concept vehicle is based on the modular electric drive matrix (MEB), demonstrating how multifaceted the new platform truly is.

Volkswagen brand continues its engagement in emerging countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the presence of Frank-Walter Steinmeier, President of the Federal Republic of Germany, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed by Thomas Schaefer, Head of the Volkswagen Sub-Saharan Africa Region, and the Commissioner of the Ethiopian Investment Commission (EIC), Abebe Abebayehu, today. Thereby, Volkswagen is taking the fast development of the country into account. Over the last ten years, the GDP growth rate in Ethiopia was above 8 percent – one of the highest worldwide. Moreover, Ethiopia is a priority and focus country for Germany under the G20-“Compact with Africa” initiative.

The Volkswagen brand is forging ahead consistently with its electric offensive and has now announced the first production location in North America. In future, the Chattanooga plant in Tennessee is to produce vehicles based on the modular electric toolkit MEB, a new generation of electric cars. For this purpose, Volkswagen is investing about €700 million ($800 million) in the plant. The expansion of the plant will create up to 1,000 new jobs plus additional jobs at suppliers. The first electric car from Chattanooga is to roll off the production line in 2022. Over the next few years, eight MEB plants are to be developed in Europe, North America and China. Volkswagen is building up the production capacity needed to sell more than 1 million electric cars per year by 2025.

Volkswagen set a new delivery record in 2018, handing over a total of 6.24 million vehicles worldwide for the full year, 0.2 percent more than in 2017. Positive delivery trends in South America (+13.1 percent), the USA (+4.2 percent) and Europe (+3.6 percent) offset considerable economic uncertainty in China, Argentina and Mexico as well as at times severe repercussions as a result of the changeover to WLTP in Western Europe. The SUV offensive along with numerous other new products from the brand proved to be key growth drivers. Volkswagen Board Member for Sales Jürgen Stackmann: “2018 was characterized by considerable uncertainty in some regions, especially in the second half of the year. Overall, though, we were able to combat this with a strong offensive of attractive new products and to offset the adverse effects. Our strategy has paid off. The new delivery record is the result of much hard work.” Volkswagen COO Ralf Brandstätter: “2019 will be another year of enormous challenges for the brand, above all in light of growing geopolitical risks. We must do our homework. Apart from volume growth, we will in future be focusing more closely on earnings performance than we have done in the past. This is about ensuring the long-term profitability of the Volkswagen brand.”

In November, Volkswagen delivered 564,500 vehicles throughout the world, five percent less than in November 2017. In Europe, the effects of WLTP became less and less pronounced. Deliveries by Volkswagen were up 1.2 percent here. Brazil continues to drive growth in South America. The market situation in China remains tense. Nevertheless, Volkswagen succeeds in boosting its market share there in a shrinking overall market. All in all, the brand faces a challenging market environment with strong headwinds in some regions. Nevertheless, Volkswagen has delivered 5.7 million passenger cars to customers throughout the world in the year to date, 1.2 percent more than in the prior-year period. Volkswagen Board Member for Sales Jürgen Stackmann: “In view of the difficult conditions we face, Volkswagen is very well-positioned with respect to deliveries. How we bring the year to a close will now depend on December. We still need 530,000 deliveries to match last year’s record. In my opinion, we could succeed and perhaps even record slightly higher deliveries.”

The Volkswagen brand is to significantly improve its earnings performance in the coming years in order to finance investments in future technologies from its own resources. To this end, the model portfolio is being streamlined and the number of variants reduced. At the same time, productivity at the plants is to be increased and the platform orientation for vehicle production extended. Optimizing material costs is to contribute significantly to achieving the target return – without detracting from product substance. Administration processes will become even leaner. “We must force the pace of our transformation and become more efficient and agile. We cannot let up in our efforts and must realize further substantial improvements. What we have achieved so far is still not enough,” said Ralf Brandstätter, the brand’s Chief Operating Officer responsible for day-to-day business.

The Beetle, along with the the New Beetle, is a true icon in the history of automobile manufacture. Volkswagen of America, Inc. celebrates the last production year of the Beetle and Beetle Cabriolet with the “Final Edition” special models. The two particularly stylish Beetles will be presented at the Los Angeles Auto Show 2018 (28 Nov – 9 Dec 2018).

As a run-up to this year’s Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition, the Volkswagen brand presented its SUV model series for the Chinese market. Auto-China Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition is one of China’s largest international auto shows. As part of its Chinese “Move Forward” brand initiative, Volkswagen is energising not only its brand, but also its products. The current Chinese SUV family, consisting of six models, is a good example of this: The currently available models Tiguan and Teramont and the new generation of the top-of-the-line Touareg will be joined this year on the Chinese market by three completely new SUV models: T-Roc, Tayron and Tharu.

At 516,900 vehicles, worldwide deliveries by the Volkswagen brand in October were 6.2 percent below the figure for October 2017. This development was mainly due to the continuing reluctance of purchasers in China as a result of the trade dispute with the USA. In Europe, as expected, deliveries continued to be affected by the WLTP changeover, although the impact was significantly less marked than in September. Strong positive impetus came from Brazil (+61.8 percent) and Russia (+23.9 percent). In the year to date, Volkswagen has handed over a total of 5.14 million vehicles to customers, a record figure for January to October. Volkswagen Brand Board Member for Sales Jürgen Stackmann: “We are making good progress with the WLTP changeover of our model range and deliveries in Europe were affected much less severely in October than in September. We expect this recovery to continue in November and December. All in all, we face a challenging market environment throughout the world. It is therefore all the more gratifying to note that our deliveries from January to October were almost two percent higher than the record figure reported by the brand for the corresponding period in 2017.“