Volkswagen of America released its 2025 year-end sales report today, showing that every single one of its fossil-fueled models went down in sales year-over-year, and both of its EV models went up in sales.
Overall, VW sales were down 13% in 2025 compared to 2024, with the sales decrease accelerating in Q4, down 19.8% compared to the previous Q4.
It’s tough news for VW, which has never been a major brand in America like it is in Europe, but nevertheless had a poor 2025 despite a steady overall car market.
But when breaking down the figures by model, a curious pattern reveals itself: the results would have been worse if it weren’t for the VW ID.4, which buoyed the company with increasing sales as every other model fared worse than the prior year.
VW’s passenger car (sedan/hatchback) sales were down by 26%, a signal of America’s continued move towards disgusting land yachts. But SUVs still did not fare well, with VW’s overall SUV sales down by 8.9%
That SUV number would be worse if it weren’t for VW’s two electric models, both of which it counts under the SUV category.
The ID. Buzz was introduced in late 2024, so it marked a 428% increase in sales from 2024-2025, given that it had a full year to sell in 2025 rather than just one quarter. Comparing Q4 to Q4, it only saw a 3.8% increase year over year, still a better showing than the rest of VW’s fleet on a percentage basis, but on a small number of sales. (And that’s despite the model being affected by recalls)
However, despite the ID. Buzz being the only model to see YoY increasing sales in Q4 2025, it’s also the only model that VW of America said won’t be back for 2026 (a move reminiscent of Porsche, which shares a CEO with VW Global, and recently committed to its fossil division despite that Porsche’s EV division is growing and fossil division is shrinking).
The ID.4 put up more significant numbers, selling 22,373 units in 2025. That’s up from 17,021 the previous year, a 31.4% increase. And the car had just gotten a significant update for 2024, and will get an even more significant update in 2026, so rising sales in 2025 is fairly impressive given that it didn’t coincide with either of those updates.
The ID.4’s Q4 performance was much worse, though, as despite fairly low sales in Q4 ’24, sales were even more dismal in Q4 ’25. Quarterly sales went down 61.6% year-over-year, a reaction to US republicans’ efforts to make your air dirtier and send US auto industry jobs to China. That resulted in a pull-forward in sales and a record Q3 for US EV sales as consumers rushed to purchase EVs before republicans inflated their price by $7,500, with sales likely to be depressed in the coming months due to the government-imposed price hike.
So, next year is likely not to be the same result, and we’ll probably see lower EV sales, both due to VW’s mishandling of the Buzz and due to hostile actions by US republicans intended to increase transportation pollution.
Despite that VW’s EV sales rose and the rest of its stable fell, VW still underperformed the general US market in terms of EV sales percentage. While the US is hovering just a bit above 10% total EV market share, only 8.6% of VW’s vehicle sales were electric across the year.
But the fact remains: in a year where media, politicians and auto manufacturers all consistently tried to peddle the lie that EV sales weren’t rising, the only VW cars that saw a sales increase were its electric ones, while all of its gassers were down. Voltswagen, indeed.
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