Volkswagen Group — In-Depth Conference Call Highlights Company’s Focus On Transition

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Volkswagen Group held its 3rd quarter shareholder conference call this week, and CleanTechnica extended its in-depth video coverage of major producers of 100% battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) beyond Tesla for the first time by covering this call. (Huge thanks and props to Chanan Bos for doing the large bulk of the work on this.)

There is a lot to write about from this conference call, but this article will just focus on highlights from CEO Herbert Diess’s presentation in the first 13 minutes of the video. Another approximately 1 hour and 43 minutes included the CFO’s presentation, Q&A with journalists, and Q&A with stock market analysts. (The latter two are actually separate calls but we combine them into one video.) I will write more about the long and interesting discussions in coming days, but I encourage jumping in and listening the Q&A sessions right now.

Volkswagen Group — Highlights from the Presentation by CEO Herbert Diess

Volkswagen Group CEO Herbert Diess spoke primarily about BEVs, which is a highlight in itself. Being a leader in the BEV market today is clearly important to the company, and being a bigger leader in the future is even more important to it. You cannot pay attention to what Volkswagen is doing without noticing that BEVs are front and center in 2021 and beyond.

The good news is that Volkswagen is seeing a lot of success. Globally, BEV sales doubled year over year. Furthermore, BEV share of new vehicle deliveries rose to about 6% in the 3rd quarter of 2021. (I agree — 6% isn’t enough — but it is more than almost any other large automaker, and that percentage has been growing fast.)

Diess said on the call that the Audi e-tron and Škoda Enyaq have order backlogs of about 30,000 units each in Western Europe, while the Porsche Taycan’s order backlog there is around 10,000 units.

In China, ID city showrooms have more visits, more orders, and more conversions than Volkswagen’s traditional fossil-powered vehicle dealers. There are 60 such ID city showrooms in China at the moment, but the company plans to increase that number to around 170 by the end of the year. Diess says the company is on track to meeting their target of delivering at least 80,000 units of the ID family in China this year.

Volkswagen Group’s market share of BEV deliveries in Europe is at about 25%, Diess says. (It’s also sitting at the top of the pile in the broader plugin vehicle market, landing at 25% of plugin vehicle deliveries across the continent. However, it seems that Volkswagen — like many CleanTechnica readers — thinks the short era of plugin hybrids is over and the company is totally focused on growing BEV sales now.) Overall, Europe is by far Volkswagen Group’s biggest BEV market, accounting for 69% of the company’s global BEV sales.

In the USA, Volkswagen Group holds about 8% of BEV market share, thanks to 27,333 quarterly deliveries there. That’s nearly at the top of the chart.

Volkswagen ID4 ID.4 car of the year winner

Globally, Volkswagen Group sold 293,077 BEVs in the first three quarters of the year — despite the chip shortage. True, Tesla’s 241,300 BEV deliveries in just the 3rd quarter are a big step above Volkswagen Group’s deliveries, but look at that progress from Volkswagen Group.


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Zachary Shahan

Zach is tryin' to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director, chief editor, and CEO. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao. Zach has long-term investments in Tesla [TSLA], NIO [NIO], Xpeng [XPEV], Ford [F], ChargePoint [CHPT], Amazon [AMZN], Piedmont Lithium [PLL], Lithium Americas [LAC], Albemarle Corporation [ALB], Nouveau Monde Graphite [NMGRF], Talon Metals [TLOFF], Arclight Clean Transition Corp [ACTC], and Starbucks [SBUX]. But he does not offer (explicitly or implicitly) investment advice of any sort.

Zachary Shahan has 7317 posts and counting. See all posts by Zachary Shahan