The Volkswagen Group (which includes Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, Skoda, SEAT and more) reports a high growth for its plug-in car sales in 2021, despite the challenging Q4.
Before we jump into annual results, let's first see the fourth quarter, which was pretty difficult for the group due to semiconductor shortages.
Plug-in vehicle sales - Q4 2021
In Q4, Volkswagen Group sold some 1,930,400, which is 31.1% less than a year ago.
Nonetheless, both BEV sales and overall plug-in car sales were at a record quarterly level.
The first thing that we can see in the stats for Q4 is that the growth of plug-in electric car sales slowed down to just 15%. There is also a huge disproportion between the BEVs and PHEVs. Plug-in hybrids were down 25%:
- BEVs: about 159,800 (up 47.2% year-over-year) and 8.3% share
- PHEVs: about 63,500 (down 25% year-over-year) and 3.3% share
- Total: about 223,300 (up 15% year-over-year) and 11.6% share
We assume that once the manufacturing constraints are solved, the group will return to a much higher growth rate.
Plug-in vehicle sales - Q1-Q4 2021
In 2021, the Volkswagen Group sold a record number of roughly 762,400 plug-in electric vehicles (up 80.6% compared to 422,000 plug-ins in 2020), which is 8.6% (new high) of the total volume (9,305,000; down 4.5%).
The company was able to nearly double the all-electric vehicle sales to a new record of 452,900 and 5.1% of the total volume (compared to 2.5% in 2020). The plug-in hybrid sales expanded by about 61% to nearly 310,000:
- BEVs: about 452,900 (up 95.5% year-over-year) and 5.1% share
- PHEVs: about 309,500 (up 61% year-over-year) and 3.5% share
- Total: about 762,400 (up 81% year-over-year) and 8.6% share
It's a very good result, but of course not as high as planned due to all the production constraints caused by the semiconductor shortages.
BEV sales:
All-electric vehicles sales by market - Q1-Q4 2021
Europe was the largest market for the Volkswagen Group's BEVs with 310,400 sold in 2021.
The German manufacturer notes that in Western Europe, 10.5% of its sales were all-electric vehicles (compared to 6.2% a year ago). In Germany, Volkswagen Group's BEV share out of the total volume is even higher at 11.4%.
The Volkswagen Group is also the biggest automotive group by BEV volume in Europe "by a large margin".
Interesting is that in North America, Volkswagen Group tripled its BEV sales and has become the second-largest automotive group for BEVs with 37,200 units sold in the U.S. The first is obviously Tesla.
Finally, in China, the group has increased BEV sales more than fourfold to 92,700.
- Europe: 310,400 (up 61.9%)
- U.S.: 37,200 (up 200.2%)
- China: 92,700 (up 319.5%)
- Rest of world: 12,700 (up 135.5%)
- Total: 452,900 (up 95.5% year-over-year)
All-electric vehicles sales by brand - Q1-Q4 2021
The Volkswagen brand was responsible for the majority of the all-electric sales, with a substantial contribution from Audi, Skoda and Porsche:
- Volkswagen (cars): 263,200 (up 96.5% year-over-year)
- Audi: 81,900 (up 57.5% year-over-year)
- Skoda: 49,100 (up 222.9% year-over-year)
- SEAT: 13,000 (up 78.0% year-over-year)
- Porsche: 41,300 (up 106.3% year-over-year)
- Volkswagen (commercial vehicles): 3,600 (up 35.1% year-over-year)
- other (MAN): 800 (up 69.3% year-over-year)
- Total: 452,900 (up 95.5% year-over-year)
Top all-electric cars - Q1-Q4 2021
The Volkswagen ID.4 happened to be the top all-electric model in the Volkswagen Group (no surprise here) with almost 120,000 units sold. The ID.3 was second with 75,500, and a few more models closed the year between 40,000 to 50,000.
- Volkswagen ID.4 - 119,600
- Volkswagen ID.3 - 75,500
- Audi e-tron (incl. Sportback) - 49,200
- Skoda Enyaq iV - 44,700
- Volkswagen e-up! - 41,400
- Porsche Taycan (incl. Cross Turismo) - 41,300
Considering that the Skoda Enyaq iV is closely related to the Volkswagen ID.4, we can note that the two counted together would be at 164,300. On top of that comes the Audi Q4 e-tron, but it seels at a smaller volume.
Volkswagen Group all-electric car sales - Q4 2021
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