WLTP smashes Volkswagen

Europe’s new real-world emissions test has helped take an 18 per cent chunk out of the Volkswagen Group’s global sales in September, and worse is expected to follow in October.

While it still sold 485,000 cars around the world last month, the German giant’s sales plummeted 47 per cent in its home market and more than 46 per cent across Western Europe.

It fared better in Australia, where its 4694 sales were off just 4.2 percent compared to 2017, but the Worldwide Light Duty Vehicles Harmonized Test Procedure (WLTP) has taken a huge chunk out of the world’s biggest car-maker.

At least eight models and many more powertrain and trim variants are banking up in German holding areas awaiting WLTP approval, leaving its dealers with little type-approved stock to deliver in September.

That stock includes all of the Volkswagen brand’s plug-in hybrid models, though it pushed its battery-electric cars through the test cycle. That delivered its only ray of sunshine in a bleak month, with the e-Golf topping Germany’s electric-car sales for the month, ahead of the BMW i3 and the Renault Zoe.

Its only other ray of sunshine was a 2.1 per cent rise in South American deliveries, because even its usual honeypot of China was down 10.5 per cent.

“Developments in September were a setback, but we had been expecting this following the records in the summer,” Volkswagen’s Board Member for Sales, Jürgen Stackmann, admitted.

“October will also be affected by the changeover to the WLTP test procedure. From November, we will be ready for the end-of-the-year sprint.”

Volkswagen blamed its Chinese stumbles on uncertainty over the tit-for-tat tariff war with the United States, which ended a 1.9-per cent growth rate for the first eight months of the year.

The US gave Volkswagen its own headaches, thanks to a soft new-car market and a series of hurricanes and storms that kept people out of showrooms, dropping its sales there by 4.8 per cent (though that outperformed the new-car market as a whole).

But the company was smashed in Europe, which was saved overall from disaster by Eastern and Central Europe falling only 19 per cent.

“The WLTP led many customers in Western European markets to bring forward their purchasing decisions, resulting in extraordinary growth in delivery figures over the summer months and now, as expected, to the severe falls in September, also in the overall market,” Stackmann explained.

“Thanks to its strong performance, with 1,353,200 vehicles delivered from January to September, the Volkswagen brand was still able to report growth of 5.9 per cent in this region in the year to date.”