VW PLANS TO LAUNCH 30 NEW CARS IN CHINA BY 2030
German giant is aiming at 4 million deliveries per year to mainland customers after industry shift to green motoring erodes its market share
Volkswagen Group, which saw its market share shrink in China last year, plans to launch 30 new electric cars on the mainland by 2030 as it vies to keep up with the rapid pace of electrification in the world’s largest vehicle market.
Ralf Brandsatter, Volkswagen’s China chief executive, told reporters at a media briefing on Monday the German carmaker was targeting 4 million deliveries a year to mainland customers by 2030, which could account for about 15 per cent of the overall market.
Volkswagen has been a perennial market leader in China’s car industry since it established a Shanghai-based joint venture in 1984, delivering 3.2 million cars, the vast majority petrol-powered, in the country last year, up by 1.6 per cent from 2022.
It narrowly beat Shenzhenbased BYD, the world’s bestselling electric-vehicle maker, which handed nearly 3 million batterypowered cars to Chinese buyers last year.
“We want to remain the No 1 international OEM [original equipment manufacturer],” Brandsatter said. “In China, we want to be on par in cost and tech with local players with a profitable and healthy business model.”
OEM is a term favoured by many in the industry to refer simply to car assemblers.
Brandsatter said Volkswagen would tap its partnerships in China to rev up development of new electric- vehicle models while reducing production costs.
It reported sales of 191,800 electric cars in China last year, up by 23.2 per cent from 2022.
However, Volkswagen’s share of the broader Chinese vehicle market slipped by 0.6 percentage point from a year earlier to 14.2 per cent last year, according to data compiled by the China Passenger Car Association.
On the mainland, where four out of every 10 new vehicles are powered by batteries, the surging popularity of electric cars has ratcheted up pressure on conventional carmakers like Volkswagen and Toyota to get on board with the shift to environmentally friendly motoring.
New-energy vehicles – a term that captures fully electric and plug-in hybrid cars – would make up about half of new car sales on the mainland by 2030, as state incentives and an expanding network of charging stations won over more customers, Moody’s Investors Service said in a report released this month.
“We expect that by 2026, we will be fully competitive compared with the best players in terms of ADAS [advanced driver assistance systems] and other smart technologies,” Brandsatter said.
He expects Volkswagen to launch 20 new electric models for the Chinese market in the next three years.
Volkswagen aims to reduce the time it takes to develop its cars by more than 30 per cent while cutting costs by up to 40 per cent as it beefs up its investment in China’s electric-vehicle sector.
In February, the company signed an agreement with electric-car maker Xpeng to jointly develop two mid-sized batterypowered vehicles for the highly competitive mainland market in 2026.
We want to be on par in cost and tech with local players with a profitable and healthy business model RALF BRANDSATTER, VW CHINA
The new cars, bearing the VW badge, would be designed and built based on “joint purchasing activities” and sharing of technologies, the two companies said.
Volkswagen owns 5 per cent of Xpeng following a US$700 million investment last year.
The carmaker has partnered with other Chinese companies, including autonomous driving tech firm Horizon Robotics and ThunderSoft, an in-car entertainment developer, to create a new generation of vehicles.
It owns three carmaking ventures across the mainland, with state-owned companies FAW, SAIC and JAC.
Volkswagen also owns a 25 per cent stake in Gotion High-Tech, a leading car battery producer.