Shanghai, June 8 (Gasgoo.com) German automaker Volkswagen AG said today that the company expects its sales in the Chinese market to exceed two million cars this year and is starting to build four new plants in China for capacity expansion, medai reported.
Winfried Vahland, head of Volkswagen operations in China, told German news agency DAPD that he expects China sales revenue to increase by 20% this year. VW China sent 700 million euros ($837 million) in profit to its parent company, Europe's biggest automaker by sales, in 2009.
In the first four months of the year, VW China saw a sales rise of 53% from the same period a year earlier, thanks to economic stimulus measures implemented by the government. It sold 620,500 cars in the world's largest auto market through April. May sales figures will be available soon.
Volkswagen and its Chinese ventures sold 1.4 million cars last year, at a total amount of 20 billion euros. China is a key market for the German auto giant which wants to sell more than 10 million vehicles annually by 2018 to pursue current world No. 1 carmaker Toyota.
Volkswagen will open four new factories in China to achieve the multi-million sales goal. Two of the new plants will be built in Guangdong for the VW's southern China strategy. The other two will be in southwestern city of Chengdu and eastern city of Nanjing.
The first Guangdong plant with Volkwagen's joint venture partner China FAW Group is to be built in the southern boom town of Foshan. The new plant will produce the Audi models.
VW's second plant in Guandong is planned with another Chinese partner, SAIC Motor. Its location has yet to be decided.
