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In the face of the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020, the automobile market around the world has been affected, resulting in varying degrees of decline in many car companies, including Volkswagen, which has been the world's highest-selling car company for four consecutive years. In this environment, another car company not only achieved the growth of new car sales throughout the year, but also once regained the top selling position in the world, and that is Toyota.

A few days ago, Volkswagen Group released global sales data for 2020, which showed that Volkswagen Group delivered a total of 9305400 new cars in 2020, down 15.2% from 2019.

Toyota has not actually disclosed the latest sales figures, but the Japanese media are buzzing after Volkswagen officially announced new car sales for the whole of 2020. According to statistics, if Toyota accumulates sales, including Subaru, in 2020, it will sell 9.32 million vehicles from January to November 2020, that is, just counting the sales in the first 11 months, Toyota has surpassed Volkswagen in the whole year to become the annual champion of this year. at the same time, Toyota also put an end to Volkswagen, which has been the top seller for four consecutive years.

In early February last year, Toyota and Subaru reached a formal agreement to increase Toyota's stake in Subaru from 16.8% to 20%. Since then, Subaru has been transformed into an equity company of Toyota, and Subaru's profit and loss results will be included in Toyota's subsequent financial results. This is also the main reason why Toyota is widely believed to be the top seller in 2020, but apart from the Subaru brand, the Toyota brand has significantly outperformed Volkswagen this year. According to statistics, Toyota sold 8.54 million vehicles in November, excluding Subaru.

According to Volkswagen's disclosure of regional sales, Volkswagen's sales in China in 2020 was 3.84 million, down 9% from the same period last year. It is worth noting that this decline is already the best-performing region within Volkswagen. For example, in Europe, as a Volkswagen home market, there has been a huge decline due to repeated city closures in 2020, with Western Europe falling 22% to 2.93 million, while Central and Eastern Europe (down 16%) is still only 3.61 million. In addition, sales in North and South America fell by 17 per cent and 20 per cent, respectively.

And at present, the Chinese market already accounts for the largest proportion of Volkswagen sales, with an overall ratio of 41%, so this is due to the rapid recovery of the pandemic in Volkswagen China, otherwise the decline would have been even greater.

In contrast to the Volkswagen brand, the Toyota brand achieved 1.8 million sales in the Chinese market in 2020, an increase of 10.9% over the same period last year, although there is a gap with Volkswagen's sales in China. However, the trend of counter-trend growth also reflects that the performance of the Toyota brand in the Chinese market is significantly better than that of the Volkswagen brand. According to the annual market share of domestic passenger cars released by the China Automobile Association a few days ago, the share of German brands fell from 24.2% to 23.9% in 2020, while the market share of Japanese brands increased from 21.3% to 23.1% in 2020, becoming the strongest growth performance of all joint venture brands and has gradually equalled the share of German brands. This reflects the momentum and brand premium of Japanese cars represented by Toyota in the Chinese market, and also helps it successfully surpass its German rivals.

However, Volkswagen believes that the decline of the group is mainly due to the impact of the global epidemic, but Volkswagen has been very successful in the layout of the new energy sector, so it believes that the development of the group is still in line with expectations. According to Dr. Christian Dahlheim, head of sales at Volkswagen Group, "the pandemic made 2020 a very challenging year, but Volkswagen Group performed well in this environment and consolidated its market position.

From the enthusiasm of the public to the new energy market in the past year, we can see that the public is optimistic about the future market, and the focus will be on the electric field, hoping to seize the future market as soon as possible through this field. Christian Dahlheim said that we will maintain the momentum of development in 2021 and add more attractive electric models.

As for the Toyota brand for the development of the electric field is not difficult to be positive, in the view of Toyota President Akio Toyoda, the future is still the future of hybrid models, and is not optimistic about the development of the electric market. So this year Toyota will also focus on hybrid models, as for the electric car Toyota as the ancestor of the new energy industry, there should be no need to worry.

In view of the increasing market demand for new energy models, the field of new energy vehicles will also become the direction of competition between the two major car companies in the future, although the new energy field still does not occupy a large market share, but from the two sides, it seems that there is a gap in the goal of the future market. In the short term, Toyota will continue to maintain the growth trend, while Volkswagen seems to be pointing to a longer-term goal.

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