Volkswagen brand vehicle sales down 8.1% in 2021

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lthough it posted strong sales of electric vehicles, Volkswagen brand vehicle sales were down 8.1% in 2021 due mainly to the sales constraints caused by the global semiconductors shortage.

Volkswagen delivered around 4.897 million vehicles across all drive systems to customers around the world last year – down 8.1% on 2020. The company blamed the ‘lagging supply of semiconductors [which] caused limitations in production throughout the course of the year’.

Volkswagen said it expects that the ‘first half of 2022 at least will remain highly volatile and challenging owing to persistent supply bottlenecks for semiconductors’. However, the company expects to be able to stabilize production as the year goes on and lower its high backlog of orders.

“Volkswagen achieved satisfactory sales under extremely challenging conditions. The massive effects on production brought on by the semiconductor situation could not be entirely compensated for over the course of the year, however. Nonetheless, our record-breaking order backlog of 543,000 vehicles in Europe alone – thereof 95,000 IDs – shows clearly that the demand for Volkswagen vehicles continues to be very high,” said Klaus Zellmer, Board Member for Sales and Marketing at Volkswagen.

The proportion of VW brand purely battery-powered electric vehicles (BEVs) and hybrid vehicles nearly doubled to 7.5% of total deliveries (2020: 4%). In Europe, these vehicles now account for 19.3% of Volkswagen’s deliveries (2020: 12.6%).

Volkswagen recorded a significant increase in deliveries of electric vehicles particularly in the United States, China and Germany. In the company’s home market, one in four Volkswagen vehicles was a plug-in vehicle.