Tesla and Volkswagen have unveiled their sales figures since the start of 2022. Tesla remains ahead of Volkswagen and even outdistances the German group. This is finally 3rd worldwide, behind a Chinese manufacturer, BYD.
Volkswagen’s new boss, Oliver Blume, has his work cut out for him. He succeeds Herbert Diess who allowed the German group to take the turn of the electric. But now that all Volkswagen brands (or almost) have at least one 100% electric model in the catalog, it is now time to move on to the second. The avowed objective is to overtake Tesla, the leader in electric cars, by 2025. Let’s take a closer look at the sales of the two manufacturers, to find out how far the German giant has to go.
Tesla widens the distance with Volkswagen
Since January 2022, Tesla has delivered 564,000 electric cars. In six months, over the same period, Volkswagen sold 217,100 electric vehicles. This is half as much and the most worrying thing is that over the whole of 2021, Volkswagen had delivered 452,900 units compared to nearly a million Model 3, Model Y, Model S and Model X for Tesla. If sales in the second half are similar to those of the first, Tesla would exceed one million while Volkswagen would do less well than in 2021.
But the comparison with the first half of 2021, during which the Volkswagen group delivered 170,900 electric cars, should reassure investors a little. Indeed, the German group announces that the start of the year 2022 had been complicated, because of the Covid, the war in Ukraine and the semiconductor crisis. The second half of the year should therefore be better than last year, and we therefore imagine that the sales figures for the whole year will be better. But surely not enough to hope to catch up with Tesla.
Tesla doubles its production capacity
Indeed, for its part, the American manufacturer has gone into overdrive in recent months. The opening of the Gigafactory in Berlin and Texas as well as the improvement of its other factories (Shanghai and Fremont) have enabled the American manufacturer to double its production capacity! We must therefore expect a record semester for Tesla, which will not make it easy for Volkswagen.
It should be remembered, however, that the group Volkswagen sold more than 3.8 million vehicles in the first six months of the year with its many factories around the world, all engines combined. The German manufacturer therefore still has many resources to deploy against Tesla, but the switch to electric is expensive and takes time. The German group has just opened its first battery factory.
Audi in second place
If we go into detail, Volkswagen delivered, over the first six months of the year, 115,900 electric cars against 50,000 for Audi, 22,200 for Skoda, 18,900 for Porsche and 8,300 for the duo Seat / cupra. The Volkswagen ID.4 and ID.5 sold best with 66,800 units between them compared to 26,000 for the ID.3, 24,700 for the Audi e-tron (including Sportback), 22 200 units of the Skoda Enyaq iV (including Coupé) and finally 18,200 for the Audi Q4 e-tron.
Volkswagen 3rd, behind Chinese BYD
Finally, before catching up with Tesla, the Volkswagen group will first have to try to overshadow the Chinese manufacturers. Indeed, the Chinese group BYD is number 2 in electric cars, with 323,519 100% electric vehicles sold since January 2022. The manufacturer’s cars are already driving in Norway and could arrive in France within a few months.
Some observers also compare Volkswagen to the Chinese group SAIC (which notably owns MG Motors). Indeed, the group has announced that it has sold 392,749 connected cars, but this includes 100% electric and hybrids. In the absence of details, we cannot therefore know the number of 100% electric cars and we imagine that it is not higher than BYD otherwise SAIC would have taken care to specify it. This places Volksagen in 3rd position worldwide.
On the occasion of the communication of its financial results for the 2nd quarter of 2022, the American manufacturer Tesla took the opportunity to take stock of the production rates in its various factories. And it’s…
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