“We are well on track to achieve our goal of becoming the market leader in battery-powered electric vehicles,” Volkswagen Passenger Cars CEO Ralf Brandstätter said in a statement on Tuesday.
Volkswagen’s most popular battery-powered vehicle was the new ID.3, which sold 56,500 units. Sales of the compact e-Golf and even smaller e-up! were 41,300 and 22,200, respectively. Audi, the group’s luxury brand, sold 47,300 e-tron SUV and sportback models, while customers bought 20,000 electric Porsche Taycans.
Sales of hybrid vehicles, powered by electricity and conventional fuel, have also increased. Volkswagen sold 190,500 plug-in hybrids last year, a jump of 175% over 2019.
“2020 was a turning point for Volkswagen and meant a breakthrough in electric mobility,” Brandstätter said.
Volkswagen has said it plans to invest € 35 billion ($ 43 billion) in electric vehicles by 2025, and sales figures for 2020 indicate that customers are starting to respond. The manufacturing giant plans to launch about 70 pure electric models by 2030, while it wants to catch up with Tesla.
The electric surge took place even though the pandemic hampered the overall sales of the industry. Volkswagen Group sold 9.3 million cars in 2020, a decrease of 15% compared to the previous year, but he said that deliveries decreased by only 3.2% in December when demand recovered.
Volkswagen is trying to prove that a carmaker that deceived regulators into selling polluting diesel just a few years ago can produce electric vehicles that people want to buy and that policymakers will accept it if they tackle the climate crisis.
It makes significant returns in some markets. In Norway, where financial incentives make most electric vehicle models cheaper to buy than similar petrol models, the Audi e-tron was the sales leader in 2020, surpassing Tesla’s Model 3.