Volkswagen expects to double electric vehicle deliveries and boost profits for its core brand this year after the automaker stepped up its switch to fully electric vehicles.
The brand will deliver over 450,000 electric cars this year, the automaker said on Wednesday. Volkswagen is targeting 1 million electric vehicle deliveries for the broader group.
The core brand is aiming for a major year-on-year increase in sales revenue and boost in profits, VW said.
The group’s preferred stock increased as much as 7% to its highest since June 2015, as institutional and retail investors cheered the automaker’s efforts to overtake Tesla in the electric vehicle market.
Volkswagen earlier this month revealed its ‘Accelerate’ strategy for its main brand, saying it expected fully electric vehicles to represent more than 70% of total European vehicle sales by 2030, compared with an earlier target of 35%.
The Volkswagen brand aims to spend 16 billion euros ($19 billion) in electrification and digitalization by 2025.
To help finance the investment, it aims to decrease fixed costs by 5% by 2023, freeze headcount at January 2021 levels, increase productivity at its plants by 5% a year and decrease raw material costs by 7%.
The new strategy would bring hundreds of millions of euros in earning in the coming years, it said.
The group’s stock has doubled in value in just four months, giving the automaker a market capitalization of over 130 billion euros ($154.92 billion) on Wednesday.
