6 months into the year, the leaderboard is a picture of regained health. Neither upstart EV hopefuls, nor a global pandemic, nor the resulting supply chain hiccups could disrupt world’s largest automakers.
Toyota Group leads the field, and despite (or maybe because of) being a BEV skeptic, the Japanese OEM is a million units ahead of #2 Volkswagen, an avowed fan of battery-operated cars.
After a strong 2nd quarter, Volkswagen is up strongly, but strength will be necessary to meet Volkswagen’s down-revised 2023 sales target of 9 million units and change.
#3 Hyundai Group looks spunky as ever. Volkswagen better keep a few eyes in the rearview mirror.
And now for the usual disclaimer: Daily Kanban ranks world’s largest automakers by sales, as reported by the automaker. We used to determine the largest automaker in the world by looking at production, because this was how the global automaker umbrella association OICA had done it in the past. OICA seems to have thrown-in the towel, and you no longer will find any recent auto manufacturer rankings on the previously authoritative OICA website, neither by production, nor by sales. Reliable production data are harder and harder to come by, forcing us to switch to sales/delivery data published by automakers. Be aware that “deliveries” can be a rather elastic term. Deliveries can be sales to end users, or cars dumped on dealer lots, or cars “delivered” to sales organizations, or combinations thereof.
