Volkswagen Confident Of Achieving Over 2 Million Sales In China This Year
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Top German automaker Volkswagen AG has set its eyes on becoming the market leader in automobile sales in South China, as the company closes in on the 2 million sales mark of vehicles sold in China this year, said its China chief on Monday.
Volkswagen, which operates car-manufacturing ventures with SAIC Motor Corp and FAW Group, has sold almost 1.9 million vehicles from January to October this year, 14.8 percent more than during the same period in 2010.
Top German automaker Volkswagen AG has set its eyes on becoming the market leader in automobile sales in South China, as the company closes in on the 2 million sales mark of vehicles sold in China this year, said its China chief on Monday.
Volkswagen, which operates car-manufacturing ventures with SAIC Motor Corp and FAW Group, has sold almost 1.9 million vehicles from January to October this year, 14.8 percent more than during the same period in 2010.
By 2015, the company also hopes to increase its Chinese annual capacity to 3 million, said Volkswagen executives at a recent autoshow in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou.
Furthermore, while the Chinese car market is expected to expand by 8 to 10 percent annually within the next few years, Volkswagen themselves are expected to be able to outpace the general growth of the industry in China, due in part to its effort in South China, where Volkswagen, Audi and other group brands have together taken about 16 percent of the region’s passenger-vehicle market.
I am very confident that we can take the lead in the whole region in 2011,” said Karl-Thomas Neumann, the chief executive of Volkswagen Group China, as quoted by the Wall Street Journal.
In 2009, the company launched a sales initiative called the “South China Strategy”, which involves beefing up the number of its dealers and upgrading the quality of their services. The results of their efforts have since seen the number of its vehicles sold in South China increase by close to three-fold from two years ago.
“These results have given us full confidence that the VGC’s sales will pass the 2-million sales mark for the first time this year,” Neumann added.
Crucially, Volkswagen’s efforts have already seen it replace its Japanese competitors as the number one automobile brand in Hong Kong.
“Over the past two years, our market performance, especially in the south, has improved as a result of an optimized dealership network and management system, and diversified marketing activities”, explained Weiming Soh, a board member and executive vice president of VGC, to the China Daily.
Two months ago, Volkswagen took the bold step of committing itself to greater investment in China.
From 2012 to 2016, it will put a record $18.9 billion into new Chinese production lines and even more environmentally friendly models for its Chinese customers.
Separately, Neumann announced that the Volkswagen Group would soon start selling cars from its Seat brand in China next year. Seat has already signed up 15 Chinese dealer-operators and plans to start selling its first model in March.
