The Volkswagen Group maintained an impressive recovery pace throughout 2023, ending the year up 11.8% from 2022 in terms of sales across the company’s brand portfolio.
The German automaker sold an annual total of 9.24 million units globally, buoyed by a strikingly solid fourth quarter. For the October-December period, Volkswagen sold 2.52 million units, an increase of 14.4% year-over-year. Excluding its subsidiaries, such as Porsche and Audi, the Volkswagen brand reported sales of 4.87 million vehicles, up 6.7% from 2022.
Like other manufacturers, the company struggled to make meaningful progress in the electric vehicle segment throughout last year due to weakening demand, unaffordable prices, high costs of production, and inadequate charging infrastructure. Nevertheless, Volkswagen set a new EV sales record for itself, thanks again to its admirable late-year performance. The automaker sold 239,500 fully-electrified units in Q4, up 16% from 2022 and the most out of any quarter. This pushed its annual EV sales to more than 771,000 units, an increase of 34.7% over the previous year. Battery-powered vehicles represented 8.3% of the group’s total sales.
During the pandemic, the Volkswagen Group was one of the most impacted by supply chain disruptions, suppressing its sales even as rapid price growth kept profits high. Throughout 2023, the automaker heavily increased production and took advantage of returning new vehicle demand, leading to a rapid recovery. This has placed the company in an excellent position for the new year. In 2019, Volkswagen sold 10.9 million units. With 2023 sales being less than 2 million units away from this number, the manufacturer is inching closer to pre-pandemic norms.
