A total of 605,500 vehicles were delivered to customers, 1.1 percent fewer than a year ago, as the company announced on Friday. While the markets in Europe and America recorded growth, Asia saw a downward trend: sales fell by 16.7 percent in China and by 18.2 percent in the rest of the region. New Year is the most important Chinese holiday and fell in February this year - in 2023 it was celebrated in January. Without this effect, things look better: If you add the first two months together, a good 1.3 million cars were delivered, 6.1 percent more vehicles worldwide - in China it was even almost 14 percent more.

Volkswagen is demonstrating its strength in China in the face of tough competition and is the clear market leader, the company explained. However, the Wolfsburg-based company is doing particularly well with combustion vehicles. When it comes to electric cars, Volkswagen is still lagging behind the competition from domestic suppliers such as BYD. The Wolfsburg-based company recently reached an agreement with the Chinese supplier Xpeng to jointly develop electric cars in order to catch up.

Among the brands, Skoda and Seat/Cupra performed significantly better than a year ago. In contrast, the core brand Volkswagen sold 1.7 percent fewer vehicles. Audi also suffered a significant setback: Deliveries here fell by 13.4 percent in February alone. Porsche sold 7.2 percent fewer cars than in the previous year.

(Report by Christina Amann, edited by Myria Mildenberger. If you have any questions, please contact our editorial team at Berlin.Newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and the economy) or Frankfurt.Newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets)