VW Group set to overtake Tesla in EV market
The Volkswagen ID.3 has gone into production in 2020 and has sold more than 54,000 in Europe. Photos: VW
Volkswagen Group will overtake Tesla to become the world’s biggest EV maker in the next five years, according to the latest analysis.
Tesla's global EV market share is expected to slip from more than 20 percent in 2020 to about 10 percent in 2025, with VW Group's expanding from less than 10 percent to more than 15 percent.
The study comes from US automotive analyst firm LMC that also found Ford, Toyota, GM, and Mercedes could also see their EV shares surge, said Europe Automotive News.
This comes as Jaguar announced this week that it will be a fully electric brand by 2025, with the first model to be launched in three years.
Pete Kelly, LMC managing director, said that Tesla’s been “dominant as a brand in the past five years but clearly that can't last".
He used VW's huge investment in electrification to pay off, citing an "onslaught" of new EVs from the Group, new offerings from German premium brands, and from Toyota, which had backed hybrids and fuel cells but is preparing battery-electric models.
VW launched its first vehicle on its Modular Electric Drive Toolkit (MEB) platform, the ID.3 in the second half of 2020. By the end of the year, VW had sold more than 54,000 ID.3s in Europe, with the model trailing the Renault Zoe (more than 99,000 sales) and the Tesla Model 3 (more than 85,000 sales), according to Europe Automotive News.
VW has also launched the ID.4, a global model that is expected to undercut the Tesla Model Y crossover on price.
The Volkswagen ID.4 will be launched globally and compete against the Tesla Model Y.
By 2030, VW expects to have built 26million EVs with 19 million based on MEB and most of the remaining seven million on the high-performance PPE platform.
Sales of EVs in Europe "exceeded expectations," said Kelly, surging by 105 percent, and were up by 13 percent in China.
LMC said that automakers expected to gain significant EV market share by 2025 included Daimler, from about 2.5 percent in 2020 to 5 percent; Toyota, from about 1 percent to 5 percent; Ford, from nearly zero to 4 percent; and GM, from about 2 percent to nearly 5 percent.
The Renault Nissan Mitsubishi alliance, an EV pioneer with the Zoe and Nissan Leaf, is expected to retain its 8 percent market share, as will Hyundai Motor Group (the Hyundai and Kia brands), which has about 7 percent of the EV market, LMC said.
Chinese automakers, including SAIC (which makes the MG brand sold in Europe) and BYD, are expected to lose significant share, as EV sales increase in North America and Europe, said Europe Automotive News.
