Volkswagen EV Sales Surge 47 Percent In 2025

A few days ago, CleanTechnica published a story that celebrated the growth of electric vehicle sales around the world in 2025. That was before Volkswagen came out with its latest sales report, which shows its EV sales were up 47 percent in the first half of 2025. This is especially happy news for the German automaker, which has been struggling with overcapacity issues at its factories. That, in turn, has led to factious relations with its workforce. Best of all, while Volkswagen sales are down over 30 percent in China, they increased by 90 percent in Europe, which helped the company stay even in total global sales in the first half of this year.

In a press release, Marko Schubert, a board member responsible for sales at Volkswagen Group, said, “The Volkswagen Group continues to have strong momentum, thanks to many newly launched models. This applies especially to all-electric vehicles, with global deliveries up by around 50 percent in the first half of the year compared to the same period last year. This trend was particularly strong in Europe, with growth of around 90 percent. One in five of the vehicles we delivered in Western Europe is now purely electric.

“The corresponding orders are also developing dynamically. They increased by more than 60 percent. Across all drive types, they went up by around 20 percent. We need to further strengthen this positive development by continuing our successful model offensive. Overall, we were able to slightly increase our global deliveries by the end of June despite challenging conditions. Gains in South America and Europe more than offset the expected declines in China and North America.”

Volkswagen Group delivered 4.41 million vehicles of all energy types worldwide in the first six months of 2025. That’s only a 1.3 percent increase over 2024, but if you factor in that sales in China were down by about a third, that’s actually pretty good news. Electric vehicle sales helped turn the tide. They were up 47 percent to 465,000 — including 800 battery electric commercial trucks. In Europe, the news was even better. EV sales were up 89 percent to 347,900 vehicles.

The Volkswagen brand saw an increase in EV sales of 14.3 percent to 192,600 units. EV sales at Skoda rocketed upwards by 147.8 percent to 73,000 units. SEAT and Cupra combined saw a 105.3 percent increase in EV sales to 37,600 units, while at Audi, EV sales rose by 32.3 percent to 101,400 units. People at Porsche are smiling as well. Its EV sales surged a staggering 279 percent to 34,200, thanks to strong demand for the electric Macan.

PHEV Progress At Volkswagen

Volkswagen Group is also improving its plug-in hybrid offerings by giving them larger batteries that boost range to as much as 89 miles in some cases. PHEV sales globally for the company were up 41 percent to 192,300 units in the first 6 months of this year.

Think the EV revolution is over? Think again. Maybe in the US, where the failed president is busy rewarding his fossil fuel campaign donors who kicked in about a quarter of a billion dollars to get the idiot in chief elected. This maladministration is intent on finding any and all EV incentives and eradicating them. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is watching the US fade in the rear view mirror as it becomes more and more irrelevant.

China graduates more engineers every three months than the total number of engineers in the US today. As the MAGAlomaniacs take a sledgehammer to higher education, it is easy for anyone with an IQ higher than a kumquat to see the long-term trend for America has turned down sharply since Inauguration Day. The current administration’s plan is to continue the beatings until morale improves. That’s a strategy, but it’s more of a whining one than a winning one.

Volkswagen EVs Outsell Tesla In Europe

Volkswagen is beating the stuffing out of Tesla in Europe. According to CarScoops, statistics compiled by Dataforce show that Tesla sold just 76,400 units in Europe between January and the end of May. During the same period, sales of EVs from the Volkswagen brand reached 122,600 units. They show Volkswagen brand tied with Tesla in March — a remarkable achievement in itself — but it trounced Tesla in every other month, selling three times as many cars in April as Tesla, for example.

To be fair, in April, Tesla was just beginning deliveries of its refreshed Model Y, codenamed Juniper, but the update seems to have fallen flat, as Tesla sales continue to decline in most world markets. You can’t sell stale bread by putting it in a new wrapper. It appears that Elon Musk fired his longtime lieutenant, Omead Afshar, who was head of manufacturing, and now intends to personally be in charge of Tesla sales in the US and Europe.

That should work out well for Tesla, which desperately needs a drug addled serial philanderer in complete control. Maybe Mary Barra and Jim Farley should start microdosing ketamine in order to compete with the Great and Powerful Musk?

Challenges Ahead For Volkswagen

Amidst all this good news, there are still clouds on the horizon for Volkswagen. Electric cars are not yet as profitable as the company needs them to be, but it is working overtime to get to the 6.5 percent profit margin level. It wanted to get there this year but has pushed that goal back to 2026. In addition, competition from other European automakers — particularly Renault — is keeping Volkswagen on its toes.

Competition with Chinese manufacturers is also heating up in Europe. BYD has a new factory coming online in Hungary, a second under construction in Turkey, and a third European factory in the planning stages. No one ever said the car business was easy, but Volkswagen has been at this for nearly a century and has the benefit of all the lessons learned along the way at its disposal. Many thought the company would not survive the Dieselgate debacle, but it did and is now on the verge of thriving again.

Over the next two years, the Volkswagen brand intends to bring two new EV models to market. One is the ID.2, which is projected to start at under €25,000 in Germany. The other is the ID.1 “A segment” car scheduled to arrive in 2027, starting at €20,000. Neither of those cars will ever see a showroom in the US, but in Europe and other world markets, they may be just what the doctor ordered.