BERLIN, Feb. 15 (Xinhua) -- On a yearly basis, total car sales of Volkswagen declined by 1.8 percent in January, Europe's largest car maker announced on Friday.
All brands of the German car company delivered a total of 882,200 vehicles in the first month of 2019.
"The Volkswagen Group made a solid start to the new year with relatively stable delivery figures," commented Christian Dahlheim, head of Volkswagen group sales. The fact that Volkswagen had won market shares in Europe, South America as well as Asia/Pacific, especially China, despite a "broadly declining overall market is a good result", added Dahlheim.
In China, the largest single market for Volkswagen, the German car maker had seen a decline of 2.9 percent year on year, but it "performed significantly better than the overall market", according to the company, adding sales of the Asia-pacific region declined by 3.1 percent.
Volkswagen's deliveries in North and South America fell by 5.2 percent and 4.9 percent respectively while Europe registered an increase of 0.5 percent in January. The company's domestic market Germany performed slightly better with an increase of 0.7 percent to a total of 98,600 delivered cars.
The biggest yearly increases occurred in Russia and Brazil with 14.1 percent and 11.5 percent respectively.
The "persistently volatile geopolitical environment" as well as "looming economic risks in individual markets" would have a "decisive impact" on Volkswagen's business in 2019, said Dahlheim.
