Volkswagen Passenger Cars reports that its global car sales improved during the first quarter of 2023 by 0.9 percent year-over-year to 1.02 million units. That’s a very slight increase and a result far lower than a few years ago (over 1.45 million in Q1 2019), which shows us the gap to pre-lockdown times.

Meanwhile, Volkswagen all-electric car sales increased by 31.2 percent year-over-year to 70,000. That’s around 6.9 percent of the total volume (compared to 5.3 percent a year ago).

This result is positive. However, when we take a look at the chart, it seems noticeably lower than in Q3 (91,200) and Q4 (118,000), which actually is a bit worrying. We rather expected that Volkswagen will sell closer to 100,000 units, but maybe something is still limiting production.

In terms of models, the main products happen to be the ID.4/ID.5 duo (41,900 units or nearly 60 percent of the total volume), followed by the Volkswagen ID.3 (23,600). Other Volkswagen models represent only a small fraction.

Volkswagen Passenger Cars BEV sales in Q1 2023:

For reference, in 2022, 325,100 Volkswagen BEVs were sold globally (up 23.5 percent year-over-year), which was 7.1 percent of the total volume.

Volkswagen Passenger Cars BEV sales in Q1-Q4 2022:

• Volkswagen ID.4 – around 170,000
• Volkswagen ID.3 – 76,600
• Volkswagen ID.6 – 37,400
• Volkswagen ID.5 – roughly *23,000
  * the ID.4/ID.5 total was 193,200
• other models – 17,900
• Total – 325,100

The ID.4 specifically is produced in Germany (Zwicaku and Emden), in China (FAW-Volkswagen in Foshan, and SAIC Volkswagen in Anting), and in the United States (Chattanooga, Tennessee). ID.5 is a coupe-styled version of the ID.4.

It will be interesting to see whether the Volkswagen brand will accelerate later this year because right now does not appear to increase BEV sales fast enough compared to many competitors.