Toyota remains industry leader – vwand gmrucken up
But rivals general motors and volkswagen are catching up; in the second quarter, GM was already able to overtake its japanese competitor.
The toyota group, which also includes daihatsu and hono motors, sold a total of 4.9 million vehicles, the group announced on friday. Number 2, general motors, increased sales by 3.9 percent to 4.85 million cars, followed by VW with around 4.7 million cars and an increase of 5.5 percent.
While GM sold 2.49 million cars in the three months to june, according to the U.S. Business news agency bloomberg, the toyota group sold just 2.48 million. VW sold 2.39 million cars. However, the wolfsburg-based company is working its way up to the world’s leading carmaker GM. VW narrowed the gap to its detroit rival in the 1. Half year to around 150,000 pieces. A year ago, the gap was still around 220,000.
While the U.S. Made strong gains in its home market, it suffered losses in europe and, to a lesser extent, south america. However, volkswagen has also suffered recently from the weak car market in europe.
The VW group has set itself the goal of becoming the number one in the industry by 2018 at the latest. Wolfsburg must overtake GM and toyota to do so. Toyota topped the list last year. The fact that the japanese were able to defend their position in the first half of this year was mainly due to robust sales in north america.
