Have you read Skoda’s ambitious plans for the next 5 years. If you think those plans were aggressive, you have no idea what the parent company is capable of. VW is thinking big, no actually, it is thinking MASSIVE. The German Czar plans to take over the world automotive market by 2018. Adding to that, the current CEO Martin Winterkorn believes that he can achieve the target sooner than expected.
VW is currently the third biggest auto manufacturer in the world having sold 7.14 million vehicles. It is trailing behind Toyota’s 8.42 million and GM’s 8.39 million. The group has said it aims to sell 10 million vehicles annually by 2018. I am sure you are tempted to know what is the blitzkrieg strategy Ze Germans are going to adopt this time.
Our friends at Car&Driver has exposed VW’s plans for world domination and here are some juicy details:
VW is going to adopt a three-way assault on the world automotive market.
US of A: Dethrone GM and Toyota from their fortress
- In 2011, VW is projected to sell about 300,000 vehicles here, up 40,000 from 2010 and up 100,000 from two years ago.
- The new Jetta is expected to account for 180,000, or more than half, of VW’s total sales this year.
- Made-in-America Passat will follow the Jetta. VW is preparing to sell about 100,000 of them here next year
- Chattanooga Plant has capacity to produce 150,000 vehicles per year which will be expanded to build up to 500,000; all for sale in the U.S. market.
- By 2013 or 2014, a 7 seat crossover built from VW’s upcoming ‘compact modular transverse’ architecture will debut with the next Audi A3 and VW Golf.
- With these new models, the group hopes to boost VW sales to 800,000 in the U.S. market by 2018 and reach 200,000 by Audi, Porsche, and its other luxury brands.
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The German giant Volkswagen owns a lot of companies such as Audi, Skoda, Seat, Lamborghini, Porsche, Bentley and so on. Owning multiple brands means that your research cost on new products would be astronomically high. Thus, to keep cost low, multiple brands from the VW portfolio share platforms and components. But that’s not enough.
With the launch of the new Audi A3, the German czar will kick start the biggest tech overhaul in its history. The Audi A3 will be the first of 40 models that will kick off VW Group’s new strategy of using a standardized set of components, from steering columns to complete platforms, in cars manufactured by VW, Audi, Seat and Skoda. The company hopes to lower cost by more than $6.5 billion a year.
The idea will go a long was as VW plans to manufacturer as many as 3.5 million compact and mid-sized cars annually thus getting closer to its goal of becoming the world’s biggest and most profitable group by 2018.
And they are not alone. BMW said it lowered the cost of building the new 3-Series sedan by 7-9 % by using components from the 1 Series compact and midsize 5 Series.
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When Ze Germans target something, they most definitely will get it. VW has set an ambitious target of dominating the world auto industry by 2018. The German Czar which owns brands such as Audi, Skoda, Lamborghini, Buggati and many more has set aside a budget of 4 trillion rupees to achieve this goal.
And it seems that slowly and steadily all their plans are taking shape. VW is all set to overtake Toyota as the no.1 manufacturer for the year 2011.
According to Bloomberg, VW sales will probably rise 13 percent to 8.1 million vehicles this year. At the same time GM sales will gain about 8 percent to 7.55 million, while Toyota will drop 9 percent to 7.27 million. If things go according to this plan, VW will be crowned the numero uno manufacturer of the year 2011 with a margin of over 40,000 units.
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VW has been consistently striving to reach the position of the Numero Uno Auto Manufacturer in the world. The race is between General Motors, Volkswagen and Toyota and these three brands are neck and neck at this time. IndianAutosBlog.com has been tracking their fight to the top since early 2011.
The German czar that controls most of the automotive brands such as Lamborghini, Porsche, Skoda, Bentley, SEAT, Audi, Bugatti and many more, has been making huge waves in the international automotive scene.
In a bid to reach the summit, VW has lined up investments worth 86 billion dollars (4 trillion Indian rupees) in the next five years
This mountain of moolah will be spent on the on new manufacturing facilities, vehicles, and research and development for the carmaker’s nine brands. Volkswagen will revamp and improve the current product offerings across its brands. Currently, VW has about 62 manufacturing facilities across the world. The company has drawn up plans to extend it to 70 by 2016.
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Since the VW- Suzuki partnership has been on the rocks for quite sometime, there were rumors about the possible break up between VW and Suzuki. However Reuters has confirmed that the partnership is still going strong and there are no plans of parting ways.
The two car companies joined hands together in 2009 when VW bought 19.9% stake in Suzuki. There many talks about how the Japanese counterpart can help VW establish a strong presence in the small car market. The partnership was especially beneficial for India because Maruti Suzuki knows the market dynamics like the back of their hand. VW, a relatively new entrant, would have benefited immensely with that knowledge.
However, since the last 3-4 months, there has been a media war between the two companies. VW went on wires to confirm that they were not getting enough co-operation from the Japanese counterpart. In return, Suzuki’s head honcho made a blogpost that VW was not giving due respect to Suzuki and the two groups needed to go back to the drawing board on their partnership. Suzuki did not want to be viewed as a group company of Volkswagen and reports of a rejig in the stake-holding pattern also came to the surface.
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Volkswagen’s plan to dominate the world automotive market by 2018 seems to be materializing slowly and steadily. The company’s passenger car brand sold 2.09 million units in the first five months globally. That’s a 12.2 percent increase over the previous year in which VW managed to sell 1.86 million units.
Majority of the growth was fueled by China which is the largest market for VW. Over one-third of the total vehicles were sold in China alone. VW sold 714,200 cars in the country, recording a 15.3 percent increase.
Christian Klingler, Board Member for Sales and Marketing for the Volkswagen Group said,
“Our positive trend continued in May and we have posted yet another delivery record,”
Back home, VW India is at a very nascent stage. The company entered the Indian market in 2007 with the Passat and steadily started building up its might. Last year was a record year for VW India as it showed one of the highest growth rates by any automotive company. It even managed to send jitters down the spine of Honda Siel India which is more established in the market as compared to VW.
The next car to hit the Indian Market from VW will be Jetta. The company will be targeting the D segment sedan market in a big way. Market rumors are that the VW Jetta will be launched in the next two months. Volkswagen is yet to bring the Passat CC, new Touareg and new Beetle to India.
Stay tuned as the story unfolds.
Volkswagen continues to stay among the numbers as it sold 6,185 vehicles last month, a growth of 244 percent over 1,796 vehicles sold in May 2010. Back in May 2010, the company was surprised with the emotions and reactions of India to the Polo, the first affordable German car. The Vento wasn’t born then, and older Passat was a forgotten car playing second fiddle in the VW Group to Skoda’ elegant Superb.
The Polo and the Vento have been the backbone for the brand’ consistent growth in the last one year with a total of 5,889 units sold in May 2011. Based on the spyshots aired by Motorbeam, we concluded that the Polo’s receiving feature upgrade, and the 1.4-liter Polo sedan sold in South Africa can also be expected in India.
If these two variants join the local lineup, chances are that more numbers will be recorded. The cheaper Vento is almost certain to draw more inquiries. VW also manages to sell 184 units of the Passat BlueMotion which was a regular feature during the IPL cricket games, doing a world of good to its popularity.
With the introduction of models like the new Touareg and new Jetta, the numbers are surely heading north for VW in 2011.
Volkswagen now owns a 19.9% stake in Suzuki and now the German car maker could benefit from Suzuki’s frugal engineering and packaging techniques which appeal greatly to developing markets especially.
Volkswagen which is a new entrant into the Indian car market made a bold move by investing 3,500 crore Rupees in its Chakan Plant, Pune. While Maruti Suzuki already has a strong presence in India with more than 55% share in the Indian car market.
Christian Klingler, Management Board Member, Volkswagen -
Of course, there is a possibility of developing products together, (but) I cannot confirm it. Suzuki is very strong in the Asian market, including India and Japan. They have knowledge in the small car segment, which is pretty unique. They make small cars and make money. Lot of manufacturers make small cars, but they don’t make money. Suzuki has lot of interest on the technologies that we have. There are lot of discussions going on about synergies and one synergy could be at the suppliers’ level as well.
The Volkswagen-Suzuki partnership could develop products globally and this partnership could extend to a partnership with Maruti Suzuki in India and thus VW would benefit hugely from the Japanese company’s cost-effective manufacturing techniques and its Indian arm’s strong supplier base.
Suzuki could have access to VW’s modern TDI diesel engines, TSI petrol engines and the DSG transmissions. The next gen 2011 Suzuki Swift could be benefit from these and could come with VW diesel engines and DSG transmissions.
The Suzuki Kizashi could also use VW engine when it comes to India while the next generation SX4 and the next gen Grand Vitara could share their platform with Volkswagen models.
Volkswagen UP, global small car is being developed by VW and a partnership with Suzuki seems to be coming at a right time as Suzuki’s prowess could really help VW package the UP cost effectively.
Click here for detailed product plans of the Volkswagen-Suzuki partnership.
