(In the second paragraph, second sentence, was corrected: to almost three times rpt three times the level of the previous year. In addition, in the second paragraph, last sentence, a typo was corrected.)
WOLFSBURG (dpa-AFX) – The Corona crisis year 2020 has also left its mark on the sales of Volkswagen (Volkswagen (VW) vz). Overall, deliveries of the core brand in the largest car company fell by 15.1 percent compared to 2019. The company announced this on Tuesday in Wolfsburg. The VW Pkw brand brought around 5.3 million vehicles to customers worldwide last year – almost a million fewer than in the previous year. The home region of Western Europe in particular performed noticeably worse, with a minus of almost a quarter (23.4 percent). China, where the pandemic situation had stabilized again in the meantime, was shown with a decrease of 9.9 percent in the annual sales statistics.
As with other automakers, however, the positive trend in sales of electric and hybrid cars brightened the picture somewhat. For example, the VW Group reported an increase in deliveries of purely battery-powered models for its main brand in 2020 to almost three times the level of the previous year. For electric cars overall – including those with plug-in hybrid drives – the plus was 158 percent.
2020 was marked by a significant slump in sales for almost all carmakers, because demand slipped due to the high economic uncertainty of many private and business customers. In vehicles with alternative drives such as electric or hybrid cars, however, the industry was able to record growth – partly triggered by subsidies from states and industry./jap/DP/stw
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