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Rivals Toyota Motor <7203.T> and Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi have
not released 2018 registration figures, but the Franco-Japanese
alliance sold 10.6 million cars in 2017 and racked up sales of
5.54 million cars in the first half of 2018.
Toyota last month released a forecast for total global sales of
10.55 million cars last year, but has yet to confirm official
numbers.
Volkswagen said the VW brand delivered 6.24 million vehicles
last year, while premium brands Audi <NSUG.DE> and Porsche
posted registrations of 1.81 million and 256,000 vehicles
respectively.
This makes Audi the third biggest selling premium brand behind
BMW, which delivered 2,125,026 cars and leader Mercedes-Benz,
which sold 2.31 million passenger cars.
Volkswagen said the ongoing trade dispute with the United States
had dampened the business climate in China, its most important
market, over the second half of 2018.
Volkswagen's head of sales, Christian Dahlheim, said in a
webcast on Friday that he expected demand in China to remain
stable in 2019, although the first quarter would be challenging.
Separately, Dahlheim said the German carmaker did not foresee a
significant financial impact in 2019 from the implementation of
the new WLTP emissions standard, which cost the company 1
billion euros ($1.2 billion) in 2018.
Volkswagen Group said December deliveries fell 8.4 percent, to
916,200 vehicles, from 999,900 a year earlier.
December group deliveries to China dropped by 12.5 percent
year-on-year, the Wolsburg-based carmaker said, adding
deliveries also fell by 5.6 percent in Europe and by 3.4 percent
in the United States.
(Reporting by Edward Taylor in Frankfurt Naomi Tajitsu in Tokyo
and Tassilo Hummel in Berlin and Laurence Frost in Paris,
Editing by Riham Alkousaa and Mark Potter)
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