The German carmaker shares jumped to a six-year high after it announced that it is looking to sell 1 million electric vehicles this year. The announcement was made when the company reported its results for 2020.
Volkswagen expects a strong rebound this year, boosted mainly by the Porsche unit. Also, it revealed its plan to cut fixed costs by another €2 billion through 2023 and raised the operating profit margin to a high of 8% from the previous 6.5%.
If VW meets the EV target sales, it would be ahead of Tesla in terms of vehicles sold this year. The latter is looking to sell roughly 750,000 vehicles.
The latest targets came after the company presented its plans regarding battery supply. Volkswagen hopes that it will have 80% of its models operating “on a unified cell design” by 2023, which could help cut costs in half. In Europe, the carmaker wants to have six battery cell production plants functional by 2030 and 18,000 public fast-charging points by 2025. For the latter, it will partner up with BP, Iberdrola, and Enel. According to CEO Herbert Diess, EVs are the pivotal point of the automotive industry. “Cars are becoming autonomous within the next 15 years so this is going to change the industry and to manage this change is probably the most important task we are facing and we think we are making good progress,” he stated.
Following the news, Volkswagen stock price went up 6%.
Sources: reuters.com, investing.com