Europe's biggest carmaker, Volkswagen plans to more than triple its sales in south China by 2018 as a main driver for its strategy to double sales to 2 million units in the country by that time, its China chief said on Sunday.
Volkswagen, which competes with General Motors and others globally, is stepping up its presence in China which has overtaken the United States as the world's largest auto market this year.
"The extraordinary growth in our sales volume in China will continue to accelerate our pace of development and may well achieve far ahead of our schedule of 2018 of two million units," Winfried Vahland, president and CEO of Volkswagen's China operations, told reporters.
Even though Volkswagen is a major dominant player in north and east China with an over 20 percent market share each through its partnership with SAIC Motor and FAW Group, it only has 12 percent of the market in the south. "South China is today one of the wealthiest and most developed markets within Asia," Vahland said.