Porsche's record 2019 sales powered by SUVs

Porsche has shrugged off any effects of the shrinking global market last year, posting a 10% increase in deliveries in 2019 from the year before.

The Stuttgart-based German sports-car company said Monday that it had delivered a record 280,000 vehicles last year. Porsche, the most profitable brand in the Volkswagen stable, continued to benefit from the world’s obsession with sports utility vehicles.

Sales of Porsche’s Cayenne SUV surged by 29% in 2019 from the previous year, to over 92,000 units, while deliveries of the smaller Macan SUV grew by 16% to 99,944 deliveries. It recorded a 15% rise in sales in its homeland Germany, and an 8% rise in sales in both the US and China.

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“We are optimistic that we can maintain the high levels of demand in 2020,” Porsche sales and marketing board member Detlev von Platen said in a statement. The company’s first fully-electric sedan, the Taycan, comes out this Spring; von Platen said the order books are full.

Porsche’s parent Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) on Monday reported a 0.5% growth in global vehicle sales in 2019 compared to the previous year, up to 6,278,300 vehicles. It said it delivered more than 80,000 electric cars last year (more than half of those fully-electric and the rest plug-in hybrids), which represented a sales increase of 60% from 2018.

VW’s new e-car plant began producing its mass-market ID.3 at the end of last year.

Volkswagen is going all-out to be the world’s leading volume electric-car company. It said in December last year that it will have produced one million electric cars by the end of 2023 and is targeting 1.5 million by 2025.

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