Volkswagen on its way to regain global crown from Toyota

Volkswagen is on track to take back the crown from Toyota as the world’s largest automaker by sales after outperforming its Japanese rival in the very first 6 months of the year.

On Thursday, Toyota stated its worldwide sales dropped 0.6 per cent to 4.99 million units between January and June.

A day earlier, Volkswagen, which also owns the Audi, Porsche, Skoda and Bentley brand names, reported that its global sales increased 1.5 per cent to 5.12 million.

The sales boost comes in spite of Volkswagen facing bad promotion after the diesel scandal, where it fitted 11 million cars with cheating software.

Toyota, which likewise makes Lexus, overtook General Motors in 2008 to become the world’s biggest manufacturer of automobiles.

It lost the title in 2011 after production was interrupted by the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, but regained it the following year and has held it for the last four years.

Volkswagen’s efforts to overtake Toyota in 2015 were hamstrung after its sales were struck by the emissions scandal.

The German company had led the Japanese group half way through the year, however the diesel scandal that took place in September, striking sales for the rest of the year.

Volkswagen has so far set aside more than €18 billion ($20 billion) to cover the costs associated with the scandal, which consist of suits, fines and purchasing back or fixing the impacted vehicles.