Strong sales in electric

Volkswagen doesn’t expect its new focus on electric cars — in
order to avoid heavy EU regulatory sanctions — to hurt its profit
margins, Chief Executive Herbert Diess in a newspaper
report today.

Diess claimed the car manufacturer expects to sell nearly 20,000
Audi e-Tron^[1]
in 2019, and also highlighted the fact that the electric Porsche Taycan^[2]
was already sold out, in its first year of production.

RELATED: VOLKSWAGEN IS INVESTING $40
BILLION INTO THEIR ELECTRIC CARS ^[3]

Strong sales in electric

As Reuters^[4]
reports, Diess said, “we do not expect a deterioration in
margins,” in an interview with daily la Repubblica’s Monday
supplement A&F.

“Our advantage is that all our brands have the same platform for
electric products and the same batteries that we buy in China,”
Diess claimed.

In his reports, Diess also said that orders for the VW ID.3, the
group’s recently revealed compact electric model, are already
covering the production planned until mid-2020.

A drop in Chinese sales

Rather than the shift to electric, Diess claimed he is concerned
about the trade war between the U.S. and China, which has caused a
drop in Volkswagen’s Chinese sales — though the company’s market
share in the country has grown over the past six months, to
19%.

Despite this, Diess emphasizes that Volkswagen is not planning
to reduce its efforts and cut exposure in the Chinese market^[5].

At last month’s Frankfurt auto show, Volkswagen marketed
electric cars as their flagship models in order to convince
customers to opt away from gasoline cars.

In a 2017 press conference, the company said it would invest
$40 billion into electric vehicles.

Since then, it has stuck to its word by investing in the Audi
e-Tron, Porsche Taycan, electric Beetle, and other electric
vehicles. It has done so, in large part, to
avoid billions of euros in European pollution
fines.