Volkswagen To Dethrone Tesla At The EV Game, Despite Having Sold 450,000 EVs Globally

Challenging its rival with its electric vehicle range that’s mounting up across several brands, Volkswagen Group may set to dethrone Tesla at selling the most EVs.

Known to have many makers under its wings, the German automaker’s EVs under the VW, Audi and Porsche names compete with Tesla’s mass-market Model 3 and Y, and luxury Model S and X units.

According to Bloomberg’s report, Tesla will likely lose the crown of the world’s largest electric vehicle company in less than two years. 

Even though VW sold only up to 450,000 EVs worldwide in 2021, less than half of Tesla deliveries, when exempting the U.S. where Tesla is prime, the two brands are fairly close adversaries.

The report also states, particularly in Europe and China, EV sales for the year 2021 in these two regions combined were five times more than that of the United States.

It’s estimated via production numbers from its Shanghai Gigafactory, Tesla sold only 10 percent more than Volkswagen in these two markets last year.

Whereas, for Volkswagen, the figures showed more than 90 percent of EVs were sold in Europe and China, 70 percent and 20 percent respectively.

Despite Tesla having already established a better market position in China, Volkswagen has a brighter future to come out on top in Europe. 

As determined by Bloomberg, Volkswagen is not only the automaker with a significantly widespread EV line-up, but also one with a clear trajectory to profitability.

For instance, Audi’s midsize electric SUV, the Q4 E-Tron, has already shown a comparable profit margin to its internal combustion engine counterpart, Audi Q3.

To further the effort, Tesla and Volkswagen have made plans to move battery development and production in house to increase profitability. 

Volkswagen has committed to building six battery plants in Europe by 2030, while Tesla plans to manufacture batteries at its new factory in Berlin, Germany.

Moreover, the German brand is expected to have sufficient financial resources to fund future growth, if it can successfully take its Porsche brand public before the end of 2022.

That being said, this move forward is likely to garner an upwards of USD 100 billion (RM 439,850,000,000), which is more than its parent company’s current market value.