[ad_1]
igo Stuttgart – The Volkswagen Group expects after a record sales in the first half of 2018 a slowdown in sales in the rest of the year. By the end of June, the Group had sold 5.5 million vehicles – including commercial vehicles – 7.1% more than the same period of the previous year. In June, shipments increased by 4.1% to 958,600 new cars. "Our core brands experienced strong growth in the first half," said Fred Kappler, Sales Manager. "We anticipate that our deliveries will be impacted by the introduction of the new WLTP test procedure in the second half of 2018. We will likely deliver some vehicles to customers later than expected," says Kappler, who is late in implementation of the new test cycle. Bernd Osterloh, chairman of the group committee, recently said (see BZ of 29 June). However, VW has already paid attention to costs due to effort and delivery stops in its annual forecasts. Daimler described the move to WLTP as a key reason for the profit warning in mid-June and saw first-half growth in Group-wide sales in all regions and all brands. The main Volkswagen brand has increased its shipments in June by 4.2% to 534,000 cars and 6.3% since the beginning of the year to 3.1 million cars. Skoda and Seat have seen double-digit growth since January. In China, the world's largest car market, Group sales have increased 9.2% since January to reach 2 million vehicles. In June, however, shipments decreased by 2.2%. This is due to the reduction of import duties on imported cars, which came into effect on July 1, the company said. For this reason, Chinese customers clearly refused car purchases in June, but at Daimler and BMW, this sales restriction was much less pronounced in China. Since the beginning of the year, BMW has sold 299,800 cars, or 2.2% more than the previous year, and 50,900 pbadenger cars in June have again recorded an increase of 0.7 %. Daimler has grown 16.2% in China since January with 340,000 units, bringing sales in June by 13.7% to 57,000 cars. Daimler had prematurely cut Chinese prices for Mercedes cars after the announcement of lower import tariffs. But China has imposed retaliatory tariffs on cars imported from the United States, which was the second reason for the recent warning on profits (see BZ of June 22.) Among high-end brands, Mercedes sold 1.2 million cars. Nose in front. This corresponds to an increase of 3.9%. In June, however, Mercedes sales declined 2.6%. This is why the company calls a fire supplier in the United States. As a result, "a lot less SUVs" for the global market were produced and sold at the Tuscaloosa plant. BMW posted a more than 2% to 1.06 million cars from the main brand at the end of June. In June, the inhabitants of Munich increased by 4% to 200,600 more cars than Stuttgart. Audi is at the bottom of the list of premium manufacturers after the semester with a 4.5% increase to 949,000 cars. In June, sales also decreased by 3.8%. Audi is the VW brand particularly affected by the move to WLTP. Premium brands typically offer more combinations of engines and equipment than volume brands. According to WLTP, these combinations must in the future be approved individually.
[ad_2]
Source link
