The Volkswagen Group on Wednesday announced that it has doubled its EV deliveries globally by 2021, delivering 452,900 EVs worldwide, including about 17,000 EVs of the Volkswagen brand in the United States.
Those are respectable numbers for what was in many respects the first year VW pushed EVs to the mass market, with the VW ID.4 coming to the US and the ID.3 rising to larger numbers in Europe. But VW is still behind Tesla, delivered 936,172 EVs in 2021.
ID.4 and ID.3 account for most of VW Group’s 2021 EV deliveries, at 119,600 and 75,500 units, respectively. The Audi E-Tron accounts for 49,200 deliveries (including the Sportback variant), and next in the ranking is the Skoda Enyaq (44,700), the VW E-Up! (41,400) and Porsche Taycan (41,300, including Turismo models).
That means global 2021 EV deliveries from all these brands combined are still less than half of Tesla’s 2021 total. Tesla also plans to scale up production in Texas and Germany in 2022.
VW 2021 sells BEVs and PHEVs globally
The VW brand itself has delivered 263,000 EVs globally through the end of 2021, so it looks to be on track to hit its original target of 1 million EVs per year by 2025. But with growth in Tesla, should this target be even higher?
VW has its own plans to continue ramping up electric vehicle production, including full-scale ID.4 production at the Chattanooga plant, Tennessee, this early year. However, most cars made in Tennessee are unlikely to reach dealerships until the 2023 model year.
The automaker in 2019 raised its target to a cumulative 28 million EVs across the VW Group by 2028. It’s an ambitious plan that will depend on VW ramping up more EV plants — something Not all analysts are convinced within reach.
