The carmaker Volkswagen also sold significantly fewer vehicles in May. Last month, the group delivered 658,300 units worldwide, 23.5 percent fewer cars, trucks and buses than a year ago. The decline was therefore not quite as rapid as in April, when sales due to the lack of semiconductors and the lockdowns in China plummeted by 40 percent. Since the beginning of the year, deliveries by the world’s second-largest car company have fallen by a good quarter to around 3.1 million vehicles compared to the same period last year.
Problems are still caused by the missing ones semiconductor chips, and in the important Chinese market, sales are only picking up again in many regions after the far-reaching corona lockdowns. According to the latest statements, VW boss Herbert Diess (63) expects some relaxation in the chips in the second half of the year, and the situation in China should gradually improve again.
In the Wolfsburg-based company’s largest market in China, deliveries fell by almost a quarter after having shrunk by half in the previous month due to production restrictions to combat the pandemic. The sharpest drop in sales was in Eastern Europe, where deliveries fell by 48 percent in May. In Western Europe, Volkswagen sold 23 percent fewer vehicles than a year ago. In North America, the drop was similarly high at 24 percent.
Among the individual brands, the core brand VW passenger cars was still under pressure with a minus of 23.3 percent, but the decline was even greater for the smaller Škoda brand with 39.3 percent. At Audi, the decline was 21.3 percent, while sales at the high-yield Porsche were down 10.4 percent. Only the luxury car makers Lamborghini and Bentley posted no declines in sales.
IG Metall questions the VW plant in China
Meanwhile, IG Metall has called on Volkswagen to withdraw from the Uyghur region of China, where the automaker has a car plant. “Meanwhile there is hardly any doubt that human rights violations are taking place in Xinjiang,” said union boss Jörg Hofmann (66), who sits on the group’s supervisory board, to the “Wolfsburger Nachrichten”. Therefore, the group board must deal with the issue. There is currently no indication that human rights violations have occurred at VW itself. “Nevertheless, the question has to be asked what it means for the company’s reputation to continue investing there,” the newspaper quoted Hofmann as saying. Volkswagen has been operating a factory in the city of Urumqi together with the state-owned company Saic since 2013.
The group can not only look at what is going on in its own “front yard”, but also has to pay attention to which “street” it lives on. “When human rights violations are visible on the right and left, I demand action,” said the union boss. The group must position itself visibly and unequivocally against human rights violations.
The company has long been criticized for its presence in the Uyghur region, but has repeatedly denied it, arguing that its presence there helps improve the people’s situation. In a statement on the report, the group said: “We are not aware of any cases in which employees of the Saic Volkswagen company were or are in detention camps.”