Volkswagen exceeds Toyota, the world leader in mid-2015 – ANSA.it

ROME – Volkswagen Toyota beats by a whisker in global sales in mid 2015, and for the first time become the world leader in January-June: the Nagoya group announced today that it has sold 5,022,000 vehicles in front of 5 , 04 million units of the giant tedesco.Volkswagen has a good chance, up to this point, to bring forward by three years the target (set in 2018) to become the world leader of the four wheels, although it remains unknown of the strong Chinese market since the ‘outlook that is increasingly uncertain.

The overtaking Toyota, which is the leader in the last three years, took place on the brakes as the two automakers had lost sales on an annual basis by 1.5 %, in the case of Toyota, and 0.5%, with regard to the group of Wolfsburg. General Motors, for 70 years the undisputed leader until 2008, the year of transfer of the scepter to Toyota, will disseminate data on the trend of the first six months on Thursday, but is expected should remain well below the 5 million cars sold. The group of Nagoya, which has among the highlights of the hybrid Prius, the Camry sedan and Lexus high-end line, has benefited from the United States, where he beat the 5.6% growth of the market, thanks to demand for NX Lexus and Toyota RAV4. By comparison, the VW brands were up 2.4%. On the Chinese market, the largest in the world, Toyota has had a good performance, in contrast to the rival who served in broader terms the slowdown in equity markets with negative effects on consumer confidence: + 10% in the first half to 512,800 vehicles against -3.9%, to 1.74 million. Volkswagen, however, benefited from the demand for cars in Europe, accelerated in the best of the last five years and a half: + 6% sales growth against 5.7% of Toyota. The two companies have had trouble in Japan: in fact, shipments were down 8.2% for Toyota and Lexus brands, and 13% for Daihatsu (another brand of the group), compared with 17% of the Wolfsburg that is likely to slip behind Mercedes-Benz among the most imported foreign cars, for the first time in 16 years.