Five years ago, Volkswagen AG announced its plans to become the world’s largest automaker by 2018. The announcement was received with skepticism by most in the auto industry, but Volkswagen carried on nonetheless.
Fast forward to the present and certain analysts say that Volkswagen is well-poised to take the number one spot this year. The German automaker’s projected sales for 2011 exceed 8 million vehicles.
Left Lane already reported on this matter last month, but new information regarding how the totals are calculated has recently come out.
Volkswagen’s main competitors for the title of largest automaker are GM and Toyota. All three brands are roughly the same size and the race is close. According to The Detroit News, this year’s final ranking will partly depend on how each manufacturer counts its Chinese sales.
In the first nine months of the year, Toyota sold 5.8 million cars, Volkswagen sold 6.2 million and GM came out on top with 6.8 million. However, 884,000 cars from GM’s total were sold in China by their Wuling joint-venture, a company in which GM is only a minority shareholder. Analysts disagree whether or not these cars should contribute to GM’s total.
“Wuling is not a GM brand, Wuling cars are not GM products, and GM doesn’t control Wuling,” declared Christoph Stuermer, an analyst for the IHS.
Volkswagen thinks that the Wuling cars should be be factored into GM’s total, and the German automaker expects GM to take the world’s top spot this year.
Other analysts have proposed an alternative method of counting sales from joint-ventures in China. Juergen Piper, a Frankfurt-based analyst for Metzler Bank, thinks that automakers should claim a number of sales that is proportional to their part in the venture.
The winner of the sales race will be announced in the next couple of weeks but one thing is already certain: financially speaking, Volkswagen reigns supreme. In the first nine months of 2011, it has almost earned almost $13 billion, more than Toyota and GM.
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