All Press Releases

Volkswagen Group is making faster progress towards sustainable and efficient production. At the same time, the company continues to make good progress towards reducing its production costs. Oliver Blume, Member of the Board of Management of the Volkswagen Group and Chairman of the Board of Porsche AG says: "We are producing more environmentally friendly than ever. From 2010 to the end of 2019, the environmental impact per produced vehicle is expected to drop by more than 37 per cent.” To address offsetting trends, performance measures estimated at one billion euros are also being made in production, and productivity is increasing by six per cent. At the same time, however, Blume emphasises that further efficiency measures must not be neglected.

The strategic mobility partnership between the Volkswagen Group and the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg is to be extended. The focus lies on support for e-mobility, innovative mobility services, intelligent transport networking and the use of self-driving vehicles. The aim is to bring about a lasting improvement in inner city quality of life through innovative mobility solutions. In concrete terms, this means that under the second phase of the partnership, WeShare is to be launched in Hamburg from spring 2020, following on from its successful premier in Berlin; the service will consist of an all-electric fleet of e-Golf and e-up!, to be joined by the ID.3 at a later date.

Volkswagen strengthens its Car.Software organization with its Group responsibility for in-car software. Starting January 1, 2020, the Car.Software organization will operate as an in-dependent business unit. As a Group company, the Car.Software organization will centralize the associates and subsidiaries within the Group that develop car software and software for the digital ecosystems. Initially, around 3,000 digital experts from the software-related associates and subsidiaries will be grouped together in this unit. The Car.Software organization will be based at Audi Electronics Venture GmbH, and will incorporate other German sites, for example in Berlin, Bochum, the Ingolstadt area, the Stuttgart area, and in Wolfsburg. International locations of the software organization include Seattle and Beijing. Going forward, digital experts from the different Group brands and regions will also work together under the mantle of the Car.Software organization.

Volkswagen Group Logistics is the first company to use two car freighters powered by liquefied natural gas (LNG) in overseas traffic. The two charter ships of Siem Car Carriers were launched last Friday in Xiamen, China.

The Volkswagen Group delivered 949,800 vehicles to customers worldwide in October, corresponding to a significant rise of 12.2 percent compared with October 2018. The Group further expanded its market share in all core regions, in some cases quite substantially. This was the case, for example, in China, the Group’s largest single market, where Group brands grew deliveries 6.6 percent despite a shrinking overall market. Strong increases were once again recorded in Europe (+25.5 percent) and Germany (+41.5 percent) compared with the weaker performance in October 2018 as a result of WLTP. The Volkswagen Group also succeeded in expanding its market shares in the regions of North and South America in shrinking overall markets. Dr. Christian Dahlheim, Head of Volkswagen Group Sales: “The Volkswagen Group brands produced a strong delivery performance in October. We outperformed the market in all core regions and once again substantially expanded our market shares, especially in China, our largest market. It is also pleasing to see that we made noticeable gains in our home market of Germany over and above making up the ground lost a year ago as a result of WLTP.”

The joint working group Drömling of Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, which rep-resents local authorities, associations and regional stakeholder groups, met today in the Autostadt. In this context, Volkswagen signed a letter of intent with representatives of the federal states to further develop the Drömling into a UNESCO bio-sphere reserve.

The Volkswagen Group has in principle confirmed the strategic targets set out in its strategy Together 2025+ for operating return on sales, return on investment, capex ratio and R&D cost ratio, net cashflow and net liquidity within the Planning Round 68. “We are continuing to pursue our ambitious strategic financial targets for 2020 and 2025. We also confirm our outlook for 2019. The Volkswagen Group remains very robust in the face of increasingly difficult economic conditions. However, we will have to apply systematic cost discipline to reach our long-term goals,” Frank Witter, the member of the Volkswagen Group Board of Management responsible for Finance and IT, said in describing the impact of Planning Round 68 on the strategic financial targets.

The Volkswagen Group is continuing to invest strongly in its future. As part of Planning Round 68, the investment plan for 2020 to 2024* has been drawn up. The plan was dis-cussed during today’s meeting of the Supervisory Board and approved. The Group plans to spend nearly EUR 60 billion on the future areas of hybridization, electric mobility and digitalization in the next five years. This amounts to slightly more than 40 percent of the company’s investments in property, plant and equipment and all research and development costs during the planning period. Compared with the Group’s last Planning Round, it represents an increase of around 10 percentage points. The Group intends to invest around EUR 33 billion of this figure in electric mobility alone.