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At CES 2024, the world's leading electronics trade fair held from 9 to 12 January, Volkswagen will present the first vehicles in which the artificial-intelligence-based chatbot ChatGPT is integrated into its IDA voice assistant. In future, customers will have seamless access to the constantly growing artificial intelligence database in all Volkswagen models equipped with the IDA voice assistantand have researched content read out to them while driving. Cerence Chat Pro from technology partner Cerence Inc. is the foundation of the new function, which offers a uniquely intelligent, automotive-grade ChatGPT integration. Volkswagen will be the first volume manufacturer to offer Chat GPT as a standard feature from the second quarter of 2024 in many production vehicles.

Volkswagen Financial Services are electrifying the fleet of Siemens AG together with the Volkswagen brand: the company's fleet will be gradually supplemented with up to 1,000 leased Volkswagen ID.4 vehicles. These all-electric vehicles are part of the electrification and sustainability strategy pursued by Siemens, one of the largest and longest established industrial companies in Germany.

The Volkswagen brand has achieved an important milestone in the “Accelerate Forward/ Road to 6.5” global performance program, with management and employee representatives reaching agreement on key points to streamline the company, following intensive negotiations. The objective of the three-year program is to secure the Volkswagen Group’s core brand competitiveness, ensure it is future-proof and sustainable in the long term. The Volkswagen brand aims to make a positive earnings contribution totaling ten billion euros by 2026, also to offset negative effects such as inflation and higher raw material costs. The operating return on sales is expected to improve sustainably to 6.5 percent in 2026. The Volkswagen brand projects that the program will deliver positive earnings contributions of up to four billion euros as early as 2024. To achieve this, the Company concentrates on performance-enhancing and cost-saving measures in the program’s three focus areas: optimizing material and product costs, reducing fixed and manufacturing costs and increasing revenues. The Company and the employee representatives have also reached agreement on staff reduction measures to cut personnel and labor costs. These measures will apply throughout Volkswagen AG. As such, from January 2024 the Company will extend its partial retirement schemes to all employees born in 1967 (and for severely handicapped employees born in 1968), to reduce administrative staff costs in particular. The current hiring freeze and access freeze to the Tarif Plus salary group will continue until further notice.

From now on, many models in the ID. Family now offer bidirectional charging with the "Vehicle to Home" function. With a home power station and the integrated Home Energy Management System (HEMS) from Volkswagen partner HagerEnergy GmbH, customers can cover as much of their household consumption as possible with their photovoltaic system. Both companies have launched a pilot project in Sweden in which an entire housing estate is being supplied with vehicles and the corresponding charging infrastructure.

Volkswagen Financial Services have continued the current fiscal year with a solid third quarter. For example, the new contract acquisi-tions worldwide increased by 10.8 percent during the months from January to Sep-tember 2023. The portfolio of current contracts remained stable at just over 22 million. "We continue to see the normalization of the financial services business in terms of earnings that has been apparent since the beginning of the year and feel confirmed in our assessment for 2023," said Dr. Christian Dahlheim, Chairman of the Management Board of Volkswagen Financial Services AG. He added: "We are pleased with the de-velopment of new contracts, which exceeded six million units in the first nine months of the fiscal year. This reflects the improved vehicle availability." Frank Fiedler, CFO of Volkswagen Financial Services AG, noted: "All our forecasts regarding business per-formance are being confirmed. We are therefore sticking to our earnings target, de-spite the numerous global political and macroeconomic uncertainties."

Porsche and Google are expanding their collaboration with the goal of enabling even deeper integration of Google services in Porsche vehicles.

The Volkswagen Group’s Brand Group Core extended cross-brand cooperation in the first nine months of 2023. Further synergy and scale effects were leveraged through disciplined investments and increased cost efficiency between the Volkswagen, ŠKODA, SEAT/CUPRA and Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles brands. There was a slight increase in the overall effectiveness of the Brand Group – however, performance felt the impact of negative factors such as interruptions in production resulting from the floods in Slovenia.

The Audi Group is following up on a strong first half of the year and reports increased delivery figures after nine months: Between January and September, the Progressive brand group delivered around 1,405,000 Audi, Lamborghini, and Bentley vehicles – 16 percent more than in the same period last year. The increase was particularly strong in the USA and Europe. Revenue rose by 13 percent to €50.4 billion in the first nine months, while the operating profit was €4.6 billion. The operating margin was within the target corridor at 9.1 percent. Once again, the brand with the four rings demonstrated its strength in fully electric models with deliveries of more than 123,000 vehicles – an increase of 60 percent – demonstrating the success of the electrification strategy.

Roughly a year after its successful IPO on September 29, 2022, Porsche AG again reported strong business figures for the third quarter of 2023. In the first nine months of the year, the sports car manufacturer increased both Group sales revenue and Group operating profit.

The TRATON GROUP has delivered a strong performance in the first nine months of 2023 with significant increases in unit sales, sales revenue, operating result, and operating return on sales and is now raising its forecast for full-year 2023.