VW intends to overtake Toyota - 10 million sales by 2018 is new goal

Subscribe to our RSS feed or get updates by Email for all the latest spy photos, videos, news and reviews!

Toyota is in a big safety issue fiasco with their accelerator pedal recall. Different automakers like GM and Ford see it as an opportunity to increase their sales, while Toyota’s biggest competitor Volkswagen is setting long-term goals to overtake Toyota as the world’s largest automaker.

Volkswagen, Europe’s largest carmaker, said it plans to increase sales to more than 10 million vehicles by 2018 as it seeks to dethrone Japan’s Toyota.

VW’s management board approved business targets, including profit margins, measured by earnings before interest and taxes, of at least 5% for the automotive business in the “medium term,” Wolfsburg, Germany-based Volkswagen said in a statement Wednesday. The target doesn’t include Porsche, which will be integrated by 2011, it said.

Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn has a target of beating Toyota, the world’s biggest carmaker, in global deliveries and profit margins. VW sold 6.29 million cars and SUVsworldwide last year, an increase of 1.1% from 2008. Toyota said last month that 2009 vehicle sales, including those of affiliates, fell 13% to 7.81 million vehicles.

By 2018, Volkswagen, which includes the Audi luxury division and Czech unit Skoda, should have a pretax profit that exceeds 8% of sales, the company said.

Volkswagen has a market value of 25.7 billion euros ($36 billion).