The Volkswagen Group remains under pressure from sluggish sales internationally, particularly in China and the U.S., the German carmaker said on Monday.
Globally, the number of deliveries across the VW Group in the time period between January and March was down to just 2.05 million vehicles across all group brands, 4% fewer than a year earlier, the company said.
Nevertheless, the group has largely maintained its global market share, albeit against the backdrop of a significantly shrinking overall market.
"The global automotive market declined overall by the end of March," said Audi’s Sales Director Marco Schubert, who also oversees this area for the entire group. "The Volkswagen Group has nevertheless largely maintained its global market share."
The war in the Middle East has not yet had any major impact on the VW Group’s total deliveries.
In China, where Volkswagen is struggling with a shrinking market and local competition, 548,700 vehicles were delivered in the quarter, almost 15% fewer than in the same period last year.
In North America, where European carmakers are suffering under U.S. President Donald Trump’s new tariffs, the number of deliveries slumped by more than 13% to 205,500 vehicles. In the United States, the decline was as high as 20.5%.
There was a surprise success in China, however: in the first three months, the VW brand, including the Jetta, bounced back to become the market leader there.
This was mainly due to changes in electric car subsidies, which hit domestic electric car brands. VW, on the other hand, was able to expand its market share slightly again thanks to its strong combustion engine business.
However, the Wolfsburg-based company does not expect this to remain the case until the end of the year.
Last year, VW slipped to third place in China in terms of new registrations, behind electric car manufacturer BYD and Volvo’s parent company Geely. Before that, VW had been the market leader in the country for decades.
The group had recently emphasized its intention to defend third place at all costs.
In Germany and across Europe as a whole, however, Europe’s largest carmaker saw growth.
In Western Europe, almost 850,000 cars were delivered, 4.2% more than a year ago; in Eastern Europe, the figure was 135,000, an increase of 7.6%. In Germany, the increase was 4.8%.
The group also grew in South America, by 7% to 148,000 vehicles. However, this was not enough to offset the declines in China and North America.
There was also a significant decline in electric car sales, which had previously been growing steadily: the number of global deliveries fell by 7.7% to just 200,000 vehicles. The decline was thus even more pronounced than for combustion-engine vehicles.
In China, electric car sales – already weak there – shrank by almost 64%. This was due to changes in subsidy regulations.
In the United States, where Trump has completely scrapped electric car subsidies, sales fell by as much as 80%.
VW has since taken action. On Friday, the group announced it would cease production of the ID.4 electric car in the U.S. Instead, more Atlas-type combustion-engine SUVs are to be built there.
In Europe, the group’s electric car deliveries continued to rise, by 11.5% to 176,400 vehicles.
Order intake also performed well here: across all powertrain types, it rose by 3% in Europe, and by as much as 4% for pure electric cars.
Demand for plug-in hybrids is also picking up again. In the first quarter, the group delivered 31% more plug-in hybrids worldwide than in the same period last year.
The VW Group’s sales figures had already fallen in the previous two years. In 2025, sales slipped below the nine-million-vehicle mark with 8.98 million deliveries.
The gap to market leader Toyota, which increased its sales to 11.3 million, had thus widened further. The Japanese manufacturer had overtaken Volkswagen as the world’s largest manufacturer in 2020.
