Volkswagen Commercial doubled EV deliveries in 2022, led by tremendous ID.Buzz demand
Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles has released its annual numbers for 2022 and is reporting strong output for its vehicles, including a doubling of EV deliveries dominated by the ID.Buzz electric van. Better still, the number of Buzz vans delivered last year is a mere fraction of what Volkswagen already has in its order books.
If the name didn’t already give it away, Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles is a marque of Volkswagen Group centered around the light commercial segment. 2022 saw the start of production of the ID.Buzz electric van after it was officially unveiled last March.
Contrary to other ID EVs donning VW badge built at the automaker’s Zwickau-Mosel Plant, the ID.Buzz is produced by the commercial division at its plant in Hannover-Stöcken, following a major overhaul to support EV production – a new assembly process for the long-running facility.
Deliveries of the ID.Buzz did not begin until the latter half of 2022, but Volkswagen is optimistic about its future based on the number of deliveries completely thus far. Furthermore, the number of deliveries on order for 2023 is already tenfold.
Volkswagen reports over 6,000 ID.Buzz deliveries so far
Despite 6,000 Buzz deliveries alone by the end of 2022, Volkswagen also reported over 10,000 electric vans already built in Hannover, with even more on the way. The German automaker shared that by the time the ID.Buzz reached dealerships this past fall, it already had over 21,000 customer orders in place.
The commercial division of Volkswagen will look to fill this growing number of Buzz orders in 2023 en route to a new record in EV deliveries. If that does happen, Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles will continue its trend from last year, which saw 7,500 EV deliveries – more than double the 3,600 that made their way to customers in 2021. VWCV’s member of the board of management for sales and marketing Lars Krause shared in the excitement, puns and all:
Our ID. Buzz created a real BUZZ in 2022 – not just here, but all over the world. We are very happy with the launch of our first all-electric Bulli from Hannover. Now, our task is to further ramp up production of all models and to deliver the vehicles to our customers and fans.” Krause continued: “In the last few months, we’ve already succeeded in doing this and we’ve been able since September to increase deliveries to customers significantly. In November and December, we sent out 30 per cent more vehicles than in the same period last year.
By the end of 2022, Volkswagen stated that orders for the ID.Buzz Pro and ID.Buzz cargo totaled 26,600, leaving plenty to keep the commercial division busy overseas. VWCV reported 328,600 customer deliveries in total last year, marking a downward trend of 8.6%.
However, growing demand for the ID.Buzz at both the commercial and consumer level leaves room for optimism, especially as the division looks to make 55% of all sales BEV by 2030.
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EV sales kept up their momentum in December 2024, with incentives playing a big role, according to the latest Cox Automotive’s Kelley Blue Book report.
December’s strong EV sales saw an average transaction price (ATP) of $55,544, which helped push the industry-wide ATP higher, according to Kelley Blue Book. The December ATP for an EV was higher year-over-year by 0.8%, slightly below the industry average, and higher month-over-month by 1.1%. Tesla ATPs were higher year-over-year by 10.5%.
Incentives for EVs remained elevated in December, although they were slightly lower month-over-month at 14.3% of ATP, down from 14.7% in November.
EV incentives were higher by an impressive 41% year-over-year and have been above 12% of ATP for six consecutive months. Strong sales incentives, which averaged more than $6,700 per sale in 2024, were one reason EV sales surpassed 1.3 million units last year, according to Cox Automotive, a new record for volume and share.
(My colleague Jameson Dow reported yesterday, “In 2024, the world sold 3.5 million more EVs than it did in the previous year … This increase is larger than the 3.2 million increase in EV sales from the previous year – meaning that EV sales aren’t just up, but that the rate of growth is itself increasing.”)
Kelley Blue Book estimated that in December, approximately 84,000 vehicles – or 5.6% of total sales – transacted at prices higher than $80,000 – the highest volume ever. KBB lumps gas cars and EVs together into this luxury vehicle category, so this is where Tesla Cybertruck is slotted.
However, Tesla bundles sales figures of Cybertruck with Model S, Model X, and Tesla Semi(!) into a category it calls “other models,” so we don’t know for sure exactly how many Cybertrucks Tesla sold in Q4, much less in December. However, Electrek‘s Fred Lambert estimates between 9,000 and 12,000 Cybertrucks were sold in Q4, and that’s not a stellar sales figure.
What will January bring when it comes to EV ATPs? What about tax credits? Check back in a month and I’ll fill you in.
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Tesla is now claiming that Cybertruck was the ‘best-selling electric pickup in US’ last year despite not even reporting the number of deliveries.
There’s a lot of context needed here.
As we often highlighted, Tesla is sadly one of, if not the most, opaque automakers regarding sales reports.
Tesla doesn’t break down sales per model or even region.
For comparison, here’s Ford’s Q4 2024 sales report compared to Tesla’s:
You could argue that Tesla has fewer models than Ford, and that’s true, but Tesla’s report literally has two lines despite having six different models.
There’s no reason not to offer a complete breakdown like all other automakers other than trying to make it hard to verify the health of each vehicle program.
This has been the case with the Cybertruck. Tesla is bundling its Cybertruck deliveries with Model S, Model X, and Tesla Semi deliveries.
Despite this lack of disclosure, Tesla has been able to claim that the Cybertruck has become “the best-selling electric pickup truck” in the US in 2024:
It very well might be true. Ford disclosed 33,510 F-150 Lightning truck deliveries in the US in 2024 while most estimates are putting Cybertruck deliveries at around 40,000 units.
Those are global deliveries, but Tesla only delivered the Cybertruck in the US, Canada, and Mexico in 2024, and most of the deliveries are believed to be in the US.
However, there’s essential context needed here, as we highlighted in our recent ‘Tesla Cybertruck sales are disastrous‘ article.
First off, Tesla had a backlog of over 1 million reservations for the Cybertruck that it has been building since 2019. This led many to believe Tesla already had years of demand baked in for the truck and that production would be the constraint.
However, based on estimates, again, because Tesla refuses to disclose the data, Cybertruck deliveries were either flat or down in Q4 versus Q3 despite Tesla introducing cheaper versions of the vehicle and ramping up production.
Again, that’s after just about 40,000 deliveries.
Furthermore, with almost 11,000 deliveries in Q4 in the US, Ford more likely than not outsold Cybertruck with the F-150 Lightning in Q4.
Electrek’s Take
Tesla is in damage control here. There’s no doubt that it is having issues selling the Cybertruck.
Inventory is full of Cybertrucks and Tesla is now discounting them and offering free lifetime Supercharging.
Tesla is great at ramping up production, and it’s clear the Cybertruck is not production-constrained anymore. It is demand-constrained despite having over 1 million reservations.
Again, those reservations were made before Tesla unveiled the production version, which happened to have less range and cost significantly more.
The upcoming cheaper single motor version should help with demand, but I have serious doubts Tesla can ramp this program up to more than 100,000 units in the US.
As a reminder, Tesla installed a production capacity of 250,000 units annually and Musk said he could see Tesla selling 500,000 Cybertrucks per year.
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