Volkswagen has surpassed Toyota as the world’s largest car manufacturer by sales in the first half of 2015.
Toyota today announced that it sold a total of 5.02 million cars worldwide in the first six months of this year - some way behind the 5.04 million units announced by the Volkswagen Group earlier this month. That figure includes cars from Volkswagen’s key brands, including Audi, Skoda, Seat and Porsche.
Those figures represent decreases for both manufacturers compared with the same period last year - with Toyota and Volkswagen reporting declines of 1.5% and 0.5% respectively.
Analysis by Bloomberg suggests Volkswagen’s sales have held relatively firm thanks to accelerated demand in Europe, where the market is growing at its fastest rate for more than five years. In particular, sales of the Volkswagen Passat and Porsche Macan have helped to give VW a firmer footing in Europe, where its sales have risen by 6%.
Conversely, Toyota is understood to have suffered from reduced demand in China, while failing to experience the same gains in Europe.
Speaking to Bloomberg Business, Advanced Research Japan analyst Koji Endo said: “Toyota versus Volkswagen is going to be a very close race. These companies want to make the profitability side much more important than volume.”
This isn’t the first time the VW Group has achieved the title of world’s largest manufacturer. In 2009 it took the title from Toyota by delivering 4.4 million vehicles in the first nine months of that year, compared with Toyota’s 4.0 million.
In 2010 Volkswagen set itself the target of becoming the world’s largest car maker by 2018.
These latest results mean that General Motors is now the third largest car maker, selling 4.86 million vehicles in the first six months of this year.
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Poor journalism - again
Let's look at the maths; the difference between 5.04 and 5.02 is 0.02 - which is 0.4% difference.
For me, that's 'a wafer thin gap' between Toyota and VW, or 'virtually no difference', but its certainly not 'some way behind'.
But then that wouldn't suit the sensationalist nature of Autocar today would it? Why let the facts get in the way of a good story?
All hail Volkswagen!
VW alternatives you can buy
VW Group already have e-Up, e-Golf, Golf GTE, Passat GTE, A3 e-Tron, Panamera E-Hybrid - which customers can go out and buy now - presumably you had other kinds of alternative tech in mind?
You presume right
Wouldn't you agree that none of this stuff is original or industry leading?
Hydrogen or air
Yes, I would agree. Electric has been around for some while too, since the dawn of motoring. Probably find that their engineers/developers would love to get into industry leading alternatives, but the accountants are not seeing a business case yet so will not let them. Instead, VW are concentrating on what they think they can sell to customers. Honda have been developing fuel cell tech for some years, and there's the £60k Toyota due in UK in limited numbers. PSA have developed some air storage tech, and looking for partners to take things forward. I've not seen what Hyundai have to offer yet, but judging by their progress and popularity (and Kia) in recent years, it would never surprise me for them to steal a march on the established big players, then everyone will sit up and take notice, possibly too late.
But does it matter?