German carmaker Volkswagen said it delivered 4.56 million vehicles in 2022. This is down 6.8% from the year before, as a "strained supply situation" led to a backlog of orders.
On the upside, sales of Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) were up roughly 23.6%.
"We achieved a solid sales result in 2022 despite persistent supply bottlenecks," Imelda Labbé, board member for sales, marketing and after sales for Volkswagen, said in a press release. "The pronounced growth in BEV models confirms that with our attractive product portfolio, we are on the right track to becoming the most desirable brand for sustainable mobility.”
The company said the order backlog "remains very high," with 640,000 customers having placed orders in Europe alone.
Volkswagen entered the electric vehicle market in 2020 with the ID.3, and has since delivered 580,000 units. The company announced the latest ID model, the ID.7, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last week. The electric sedan is intended to help Volkswagen extend its line-up of electric vehicles into the "upper middle class high-volume segment."
"The roadmap is clear: with the ACCELERATE strategy, Volkswagen is stepping up the pace of its electric campaign with ten new electric models by 2026," the company said.
Tesla reported a surprise increase in sales in the third quarter as the electric car maker likely benefited from a rush by consumers to take advantage of a $7,500 credit before it expired on Sept. 30. The company reported Thursday that sales in the three months through September rose 7% compared to the same period a year ago. The gain follows two quarters of steep declines as people turned off by CEO Elon Musk’s foray into right-wing politics avoided buying his company’s cars and even protested at some dealerships. Sales rose to 497,099 vehicles, compared with 462,890 in the same period last year.
OpenAI could now be the world’s most valuable startup, ahead of Elon Musk’s SpaceX and TikTok parent company ByteDance, after a secondary stock sale designed to retain employees at the ChatGPT maker. Current and former OpenAI employees sold $6.6 billion in shares to a group of investors, pushing the privately held artificial intelligence company’s valuation to $500 billion, according to a source with knowledge of the deal who was not authorized to discuss it publicly. The valuation reflects high expectations for the future of AI technology and continues OpenAI’s remarkable trajectory from its start as a nonprofit research lab in 2015.
Tom’s Guide Editor-in-Chief Mark Spoonauer breaks down Apple & Amazon's latest product drops—what's hot, what's hype, and what really matters for users.
Police in Northern California pulled over a self-driving Waymo taxi after it made an illegal U-turn. But without a driver behind the wheel, they could not issue a moving violation ticket.
With satellites already in orbit, defense contractor L3Harris is standing by to accelerate Trump's executive order. We take an inside look at the technology
Electronic Arts, the video game maker of “Madden NFL,” “The Sims,” and other popular titles, is being acquired and taken private for about $52.5 billion in what could become the largest-ever buyout funded by private-equity firms.
