The "golden signboard" is no longer working.
China is known as Volkswagen's "second hometown", and this sentence is enough to show Volkswagen's position and influence in the domestic automobile market. Compared with other joint venture brands, Volkswagen entered the Chinese auto market earlier, when even domestic car brands were few, and Volkswagen has launched many deeply rooted products including Jetta, Santana, etc. Not only in China, but even in the global auto market, Volkswagen's fame is also well-known, and it can even be said that almost no car brand can match it.
But today's Volkswagen has lost the "aura" of the past, sales in the world have declined year by year, and the performance of China, Volkswagen's largest market, has also been thrown on the street, according to the data, all the brands under Volkswagen last year added up to a total of 8.88 million vehicles, a year-on-year decrease of 5% compared with 2020, a year-on-year decrease of about 500,000 vehicles, becoming the lowest in history since 2011; and the sales of these 8.88 million vehicles in the Chinese market accounted for about 40%, and the cumulative sales volume was 3.3 million, a year-on-year decline 14%, also set a new low in China sales in eight years.
Although Toyota did not announce global sales in 2021, as of November last year, Toyota's global sales reached 9.56 million units, and if you add the December sales estimate, then toyota's global sales last year are definitely more than 10 million.
This also means that Volkswagen has not only once again ceded the throne of the global sales champion to Toyota, but even its "second hometown" advantage no longer exists.
It should be known that in the past few years from 2016 to 2019, Volkswagen has won the global leading position for four consecutive years, and the annual global sales have exceeded the 10 million mark, and now the Japanese car is lagging behind, and even has the trend of surpassing, which I am afraid that even Volkswagen itself did not expect. So why did Volkswagen's global and domestic sales take a sharp turn for the worse?
If objectively analyzed, the reason why Volkswagen's sales have declined is due to the impact of the new crown epidemic and the global lack of cores, but this is not the dilemma faced by Volkswagen as a car company, so it is not enough to become the main reason for Volkswagen's sales on the street, a large part of which is caused by Volkswagen itself.
Most of the impressions of previous Volkswagen products in everyone's mind are excellent, stable and reliable, and a car can be driven for more than ten or twenty years at will. Today's Volkswagen is frequently exposed to quality problems, such as what Sagitar breaks the shaft, Tiguan L engine burns oil, etc.; and the follow-up Volkswagen has exposed the emission fraud scandal, and various factors have also led to the decline of Volkswagen's reputation in the world.
In addition, the continuous rise of China's own brands, the proportion of Japanese cars in the market is getting higher and higher, resulting in everyone's "feelings" for Volkswagen is gradually weakened, coupled with the fact that the car is now in the stage of electrification transformation, Volkswagen, which has a greater advantage in the field of traditional fuel vehicles, is obviously somewhat "unsatisfied" in the field of new energy vehicles, not to mention catching up with today's new car-making brand, and even the development of many traditional enterprises in the field of new energy has also thrown off Volkswagen.
I have to admit that volkswagen's first-hand advantage in the Chinese market has begun to gradually lose, and the decline in sales is also expected, if volkswagen does not take some strong measures to regain some people's hearts, I am afraid that there will be a lot of "suffering" in the future.