Audi has started the fourth quarter with further sales growth. In October, global deliveries increased year-on-year by 2.0 percent to around 149,200 cars. Demand for the four rings proved very positive especially in the United States (+16.8 percent) and several southern European markets. Since January around 1,497,150 customers decided to buy an Audi globally, leading to a 3.6 percent growth compared to one year ago. Cumulative sales exceeded the 2014 figures in all regions around the world.
“Despite the imminent model changeover with our bestseller, the A4, Audi sales continued to develop positively in October. This once again demonstrates that our business stands on a very solid foundation,” says Dietmar Voggenreiter, Member of the Board of Management for Sales and Marketing at AUDI AG. “We are thus firmly on track to achieving another all-time high for the whole of 2015.”
The new A4 will be launched this week as a Sedan and Avant in the first European countries before celebrating its premiere in the overseas markets in 2016. To date, its predecessor has been the most successful Audi A4 generation ever, with already over 2.4 million units sold worldwide. The company will continue the success story with the new A4 and expects further substantial growth for the global premium mid-size segment. Even before the new A4 arrives at dealers, the pre-orders for the model have already reached a very high level.
Over the past few months both the new Audi TT and the new Q7 got off to a successful start; both continued to grow in October. TT sales rose by 79 percent to around 2,400 units compared with the same period in 2014. Sales of the Q7 grew by 55.3 percent to around 7,600 full-size SUVs. Its new generation is still to be introduced in the large non-European markets over the coming months. In October, sales of the A6 also increased notably (+5.2% to around 24,500 cars) in the top segment.
Among Audi’s large sales markets, the United States proved the strongest growth engine for the four rings in October too. Audi of America reported sales up 16.8 percent to 17,700 customers in the month. Audi’s cumulative sales increased by 13.0 percent since January to 165,103 premium cars and, as such, performed more than twice as strongly as the U.S. market as a whole.
In Europe, France (+11.0% to 5,495 cars), Italy (+11.9% to 4,602 cars) and the Netherlands (+30.4% to 1,619 cars) in particular managed in October to build on their positive development over the past few months. Audi also achieved further progress on the Iberian Peninsula: in Spain, Audi delivered 3,380 cars, 7.7 percent more than a year ago, while 881 deliveries in Portugal topped the previous year’s figure by 39.4 percent. In Russia by contrast, following growth in September, October sales returned to miss 2014 levels (-17.9% to 2,155 cars). In total, Audi sold around 67,350 cars in Europe in the past month, 3.4 percent more than a year ago; cumulative sales totaled around 680,000 deliveries, up 3.8 percent.
In China, Audi delivered 46,763 premium cars to customers in October, down 2.8 percent year-on-year. In the same period last year, the market introduction of the A3 Sedan as another locally produced model, which got underway in fall 2014, created additional traffic at Chinese dealers. From January through October of this year, sales in China were almost on the same level as in 2014: down 0.6 percent to 461,174 customers. In the same period, Audi increased sales substantially in Australia (+19.0% to 19,079 cars) and South Korea (+11.1% to 25,848 cars). As such, the company’s cumulative deliveries throughout the Asia-Pacific region totaled around 549,100 cars, 0.3 percent more than a year ago.