The delivery numbers of Volkswagen with CEO Oliver Blume (54) continued to recover in April. The group handed over significantly more cars to its customers in almost all markets – especially in the important Chinese market. More than every third car of the group was delivered there in April. Only in the rest of the Asia-Pacific region was there a small minus. Overall, deliveries by the VW Group rose by almost 40 percent to 720,200 vehicles, as Volkswagen announced in Wolfsburg on Friday. And the individual brands also performed better than a year earlier, almost across the board. Only for Lamborgini and Bentley, as well as for the heavy commercial vehicles of the VW brand belonging to Traton, did the numbers fall.
Just a few days ago, data from the Chinese industry association PCA showed that the Chinese car market continued to stabilize in April. Compared to the previous month, 1.63 million cars were delivered to customers, 2.5 percent more. Compared to the same period last year, that was even an increase of more than half – at that time the People’s Republic was still trying to contain the Covid pandemic in the country with hard lockdowns, which severely limited sales. The biggest jump last month was in alternative drives with almost 86 percent plus year-on-year to 527,000 cars. For the type of drive in China especially the all-electric battery cars (BEV).
China is the largest car market in the world and as such also for the German manufacturers Volkswagen (including Audi and Porsche, bmw and Mercedes-Benz the most important single market. With the significant increase in April, VW deliveries in China in the first four months of 2023 have now reached the previous year’s level.