Despite setbacks in China and the US
After all that negativity, it’s nice to be treated to good car news from Germany on a Monday morning. That’s thanks to Volkswagen, although its subsidiary brand Porsche is performing much worse.
1 percent. It might not sound excessive, but with 1 percent more cars sold, the result of the Volkswagen Group in the third quarter of 2025 could have been much worse. In total, 2,198,800 cars left the showrooms worldwide at the German automaker. If we look at the first three quarters of this year combined, the increase is even slightly larger. In nine months, 6,604,100 Volkswagen products were registered, 1.2 percent more than last year.
Furthermore, the growth seems to come at least partly from EVs, which is hopeful for an automaker that has partly been forced to bet heavily on that horse. In the last quarter, the Volkswagen Group sold 252,100 purely electric cars, a whopping 33.1 percent more than in the same period last year. Again, the growth appears even larger when we look at the year so far: 41.7 percent, for a total of 717,500 EVs.
All this doesn’t mean there are no concerns at Volkswagen. For example, things are definitely going poorly in certain world regions, with particularly giant China (-7.2 percent in Q3, -4 in 2025) and North America standing out. Partly due to import tariffs, 9.8 percent fewer Volkswagen products went to North American customers, or 7.8 percent less if we look at three quarters combined. The situation is balanced out in the last quarter by Western Europe (+8 percent), Central and Eastern Europe (+13.7), and South America (+9.7 percent).
Porsche
At the brand level, there are both positives and negatives in Volkswagen’s results, but Porsche stands out particularly negatively. The sporty luxury brand scored 5.7 percent less in the quarter and has to manage with 6 percent less so far in 2025. There are several reasons for this. Porsche is suffering heavily from Chinese sales declines and American import tariffs, but also from its own decision to transform certain vital models into pure EVs. This turns out not to be as successful a recipe worldwide as hoped, but means that the Macan and soon also the 718s and the Cayenne might urgently need fuel-powered successors after all. Expensive moves, especially with disappointing sales figures.