IAA 2019
The ID.3 is the first pure electric car from Volkswagen.
Frankfurt has hardly Volkswagen unveiled its first pure electric model at the IAA with the ID.3, the banking subsidiary of the car company would like to benefit from the e-mobility boom. Volkswagen According to its own statements, Financial Services aims to handle lease agreements for around 80 percent of the Group’s new e-vehicles.
Jens Legenbauer, Speaker of the Board of Management of Volkswagen Leasing, sees leasing as the key to e-mobility. “The customer is thus taken the fear of e-mobility,” he says. The Autobank plans to accompany the entire life cycle of the electric car. For example, the electric car would not simply be resold after three years, but would be forwarded to a new customer via a follow-up contract as a used car.
Electric cars are also interesting for corporate fleets, since drivers of e-cars as company cars have only had to pay tax on their private routes at a flat rate of 0.5 percent of the gross list price – with burners this figure is one percent. In the fleet business, the VW Bank sees an important key to continue to grow. “We have set ourselves the goal of becoming the number one fleet provider by 2025,” says Kai Vogler, Head of European Sales at VW Financial Services.
So far, VW Financial Services has high market shares, especially in the private customer segment. So be in Germany around 60 percent of Group vehicles, including VW and Audi owned, leased or financed through the VW subsidiary. In the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and France, there are a total of 50 percent.
“Here, the air is getting too thin to keep growing,” says Vogler. The fleet business is still a growth market. Although the VW Bank is already the number one fleet provider for vehicles of its own brand. But now it is important to integrate other brands in the fleet offer in order to attract larger customers and to expand in Europe and worldwide.
Growth driver used cars
By 2025, VW Financial Services has set itself the goal of holding 30 million contracts – currently around 20 million. CEO Lars Henner Santelmann sees the used vehicle business as another growth driver. The retail market is becoming more and more a used car market, he says. Already in October 2017, the VW financial division has founded the online used car platform Heycar, by the end of the year 600 000 used vehicles to be listed on the platform.
The car market is currently experiencing a decline in new sales. Experts, such as the Center of Automotive Management, expect global sales to decline by five percent this year. VW Bank, formerly a leasing and financing provider, has now expanded its business to include mobility services, including car-sharing and parking-ticket paying.
That the mobility trend is benefiting from owning the car has also been recognized by the automotive industry. Such as the Mercedes Benz Bank, as its CEO Benedict Schell says. “The Mercedes Benz Bank has been developing from a classic auto bank to a mobility bank for many years. “It was about e-mobility in particular to create an ecosystem around the car. That would go from financing to the charging infrastructure to integrated billing
Despite these new challenges and growth targets, the VW Bank, which made 2.6 billion euros in profits last year, wants to save 850 million euros annually by 2025. As part of this efficiency program, the Autobank will also be taking jobs away – among others in Germany. The reduction is however predominantly controlled by fluctuation, so CEO Santelmann. Jobs that become vacant would not necessarily be filled.
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