* Text/Spades with long sword
Recently, the official website of Volkswagen Group announced its results for the first quarter of 2022.
In summary, the auto giant's first-quarter financial data is mixed with joys and worries. For example, in terms of car sales, Volkswagen's performance was severely affected by the global supply chain crisis and the Russian-Ukrainian war, which made its performance fluctuate in the first quarter. In terms of earnings, its first-quarter vehicle deliveries fell 21.9% to 1.898 million units.
However, Volkswagen's sales revenue and operating profit have remained stable in the fluctuating sales volume, which is worthy of investors' attention. In terms of earnings, the former figure was 62.7 billion euros, basically unchanged from the same period last year, an increase of 0.6%, and operating profit was 8.5 billion euros, an increase of 75.7% from the same period last year.
Volkswagen explained that the company's ability to stabilize and even generate more revenue while total sales declined was due to "an improved sales mix, better pricing, ongoing cost control, and flexibility from a global presence" in the first quarter. In short, Volkswagen's rapid optimization of the supply chain and the increase in price sales of some models compensated for the losses it suffered during the crisis.
Of course, the importance of other "additional revenue-generating channels" should not be overlooked – Volkswagen mentioned in its earnings report that part of the source of revenue in the first quarter was due to the valuation of hedged derivatives of raw materials such as nickel at 3.5 billion euros.
In addition to the overall sales, the biggest expectation of the outside world for Volkswagen is the electrification process, after all, this is directly related to the life and death of traditional car companies in the new era. For now, at least Volkswagen hasn't disappointed investors — in the first quarter, its all-electric vehicle sales and deliveries rose to 5.2 percent of total deliveries, or 99,100 electric vehicles, up 39,100 from a year earlier.
Volkswagen's electrification journey was officially established as early as 2016. In the "TOGETHER – Strategy 2025" strategy released that year, Volkswagen said that electrification was the core strategic cornerstone of the group in the next 10 years, and set a goal that seemed quite fanciful at the time: in 2025, Volkswagen's annual sales of pure electric vehicles will reach 2 million to 3 million.
According to the published data, Volkswagen's annual sales of electric vehicles are 452,900 units, an increase of nearly double the year-on-year. However, such achievements are still far from the goal of 2 million sales, unless Volkswagen can double its electric vehicle sales every year in the next few years, its ambitious electric vehicle strategy can only be postponed.
Because of this, in recent years, Volkswagen is trying to improve the presence of pure electric vehicles in the global market.
On the one hand, the century-old car company wants to bring the methodology of the era of fuel vehicles to the era of trams, so it launched MEB (Modular Platform for Electric Vehicles) based on the previous success of MQB (Horizontal Engine Modular Platform). As the name suggests, the latter is laid out around the battery pack, and the core components such as the battery pack and the motor are set in a fixed position and mode, which has strong scalability and can adjust different mileage according to the needs of different electric vehicles. If the public's expectations of MEB come true, it can also reduce production design costs like MQB, thereby significantly increasing production capacity.
For its own weaker software, Volkswagen has also made a layout. Previously, Volkswagen had released news that it would create a new project "Trinity" this year, which will follow the MEB platform, but at the same time introduce CTC (integrated casting) technology and rich software systems. It is not difficult to see that Volkswagen is getting closer and closer to its rival Tesla in production.
Of course, improving the ability to build cars is one thing, but how to sell these cars still requires a lot of hard thinking from volkswagen.
At present, Volkswagen's electric brands led by the ID family are able to maintain a certain amount of sales, largely due to The deep-rooted influence of Volkswagen in the European market and the lack of local competitors. In China, North America and other markets, Volkswagen's set of play is not so popular - new car-making forces and Tesla are competing to grab consumer minds. However, unlike the brand aura and patent barriers in the era of fuel vehicles, in the era of trams, Volkswagen has not shown its own unique advantages.
Perhaps with this in mind, Volkswagen has also considered increasing B-end sales in recent years.
Last July, Green Mobility Holding, a Volkswagen-led consortium, planned to acquire car rental company Europcar Mobility Group, one of Volkswagen's subsidiaries itself sold in 2006. Volkswagen's renewed M&A of Europcar can be seen as a new attempt in the field of mobility.
In short, Europcar's car rental and shared travel business can effectively help Volkswagen digest inventory, increase sales, and also help Volkswagen bring its new models to market. This operation has been played out in domestic car companies, such as Geely Emgrand EV, which contributed almost 60% of its sales in 2018 by Geely's Cao Cao Travel.
In any case, there will not be too much time left for Volkswagen - in its base camp, Tesla is relying on the Berlin Gigafactory to expand, and new Chinese car-making forces have landed in the Nordic countries, ready to use this as a springboard to march south; at the same time, Volkswagen's expansion in china and north America is extremely slow, and the solution of supply chain problems and the power of technology can indeed bring certain advantages to Volkswagen, but how much increment these advantages can bring to it is still unknown.
*Image courtesy of Yandex