Brand Group Core reports solid results for 2024 in a challenging environment

Review
The Brand Group Core stands for strong individual brands, each focusing on different consumer groups. In 2024, the volume brands increased their market presence in Europe by 0.9 percentage points to 20.1% with the launch of new models. The fact that the brand group was able to grow both vehicle sales and market share in Europe in spite of the generally difficult market environment is testimony to the attractiveness of the current model range – and to the successful coordination of positioning among the individual core brands.

The Volkswagen brand held its own in a challenging market environment in 2024 and proved its strategic strength. Weaker demand, particularly with reference to electric vehicles at the beginning of the year, led to higher purchase incentives. Numerous new models had a short-term negative impact on profitability. With its performance program, Volkswagen optimized the price-performance ratio, reduced product costs and tightened the structure for overheads. For example, factory costs per vehicle at Volkswagen brand plants were 3% lower than the previous year, in part as a result of optimizing shifts. As the same time, the Volkswagen brand used financial resources to reduce personnel costs in administration with a view to strengthening efficiency and competitiveness.

Outlook
The Brand Group Core is steadily growing closer together – in the coming years, the brand group will concentrate on further increasing efficiency as well as consistently expanding cross-brand collaboration. Going forward, the brand group’s global production network of 22 locations will be organized in five production regions. This will leverage cross-brand synergies and regional cost advantages with a view to establishing efficient and future-oriented production.

The number of country clusters for technical development will also be reduced across all brands to be able to respond to specific market requirements and customer wishes more effectively and efficiently in future. In parallel, development times for new vehicles will be shortened in order to respond faster to market changes.

Work on the Electric Urban Car Family is in full swing across all brands. Under the project led by Seat/CUPRA, the Brand Group Core will be launching electric cars in the 25,000-euro class from 2026. The four models – two from the Volkswagen brand and one each from CUPRA and Škoda – will be built at the Spanish plants in Martorell and Pamplona. The Electric Urban Car Family will unlock synergy potential totaling 650 million euros across the entire product life cycle.

The “Zukunft Volkswagen” program agreed at the end of December 2024 laid the foundation for the competitiveness of Volkswagen AG in Germany. The program combines economic stability and sustainable employment. It paves the way for the Volkswagen brand as the main pillar of the Brand Group Core to become the global technologically leading volume manufacturer by 2030.

That is why the Brand Group Core is targeting continuous increases in earnings in the coming years underpinned by the effects of the ongoing performance programs at all volume brands. Intensive efforts are already underway to implement the measures that have been decided – and thus generate a pathway to a medium-term return on sales of 8% for the Brand Group Core.