It’s safe to say 2021 was a bittersweet year for the Volkswagen Group in terms of sales. On one hand, overall delivers declined by 4.5% to 8,882,000 cars, but on the flip side, shipments to customers of fully electric vehicles almost doubled to 425,900 units. It represents a healthy increase of 96%. The German automotive conglomerate says the microchip shortage greatly hampered sales as the order books are apparently full but the company can’t ship some cars dues to missing semiconductors.
If you’re wondering which EV was the VW Group’s most successful model last year, the answer shouldn’t come as a big surprise. The ID.4 compact crossover achieved the number one spot by racking up 119,600 units. The ID.3 hatchback had to settle for second place with 75,500 units while the Audi E-Tron / E-Tron Sportback large SUV took the last place on the podium with 49,200 units.
The VW ID.4’s Czech equivalent, the Skoda Enyaq iV, was fourth with 44,700 cars, followed by the e-up! city car with 41,400 units or 100 more than the Porsche Taycan (including Sport Turismo and Cross Turismo). For the first time ever, the latter managed to outsell the 911 sports car, beating the Panamera and 718 in the process to grab the third spot, behind the Macan and Cayenne SUVs.
By selling nearly twice as many battery-powered EVs as the year before, the share in sales of cars without a combustion engine rose from 2.5% in 2020 to 5.1% in 2021. The VW Group is happy to report it sells the most electric cars in Europe than any other automaker “by a large margin” and occupies second place in the United States where it’s trailing behind Tesla and has a market share of around 7.5%.
VW also had a great 2021 in China where 92,700 BEVs were delivered in the last 12 months, more than four times than in 2020. Globally, plug-in hybrids were a hit among VW Group customers as demand for PHEVs rose by 61% to 309,500 examples in 2021.
In the long run, the company estimates roughly 50% of all the cars it will sell annually by 2030 will be EVs.
Source: Volkswagen Group
