Tag Archives: Sales results

Skoda Quietly Had Its Biggest Year in Six Years

While the global auto industry is still trying to figure out what comes after the post-pandemic whiplash, Skoda has gone ahead and delivered something refreshingly old-school: real, measurable growth. In 2025, the Czech automaker built 1,065,000 vehicles worldwide, a 15-percent jump over the previous year and its strongest production result since 2019. That’s not a rebound—it’s a comeback.

At the center of it all is Skoda’s historic home in Mladá Boleslav, which pumped out 605,600 vehicles while also assembling 329,000 battery systems for everything from Skoda’s own EVs to other Volkswagen Group products. It’s an operation that now straddles two automotive worlds at once, still building combustion-engine cars while simultaneously supplying the electrified future.

Skoda likes to point out—correctly—that Mladá Boleslav is the only Volkswagen Group factory that builds ICE vehicles and full EVs on the same production line. That’s not just a trivia fact; it’s a quiet flex. It means Skoda can pivot production faster than most brands as market demand swings between gasoline, hybrid, and electric powertrains.

And swing it has.

On the electric side, Skoda’s new Elroq compact electric crossover has taken off with 112,500 units built by January 2025, while the larger and already familiar Enyaq added another 77,000 vehicles. These numbers don’t make Skoda a Tesla-level EV powerhouse, but they firmly establish it as a serious European electric player—not a reluctant follower.

Meanwhile, Skoda hasn’t forgotten how to make old-fashioned mechanical hardware. Across its factories, the company produced more than 1.03 million transmissions and over 500,000 engines in 2025, underscoring that the ICE business is still very much alive inside the brand.

If Mladá Boleslav is the brain, Kvasiny is the muscle. The plant’s output jumped from 248,000 to 301,500 vehicles, a healthy 20-plus-percent increase that signals strong demand for Skoda’s higher-margin models, many of which are built there.

The growth story doesn’t stop in Europe. In India, production doubled to 73,800 vehicles, driven largely by the new Kylaq crossover, a model designed specifically for that rapidly growing market. This isn’t just export-and-hope strategy—Skoda is tailoring its products to local tastes, and it’s paying off.

Then there’s Vietnam, where Skoda has opened a new assembly plant with the Thanh Cong Group. So far, it’s modest—2,500 Slavia and Kushaq models built from Indian-supplied kits—but it’s a classic first step toward deeper localization in Southeast Asia, a region every global automaker is eyeing.

Skoda’s management isn’t hiding its satisfaction.
“For the first time in six years, we exceeded the limit of one million Skoda cars produced,” said Andreas Dick, the board member responsible for production and logistics. And for once, corporate pride actually lines up with the numbers.

What makes Skoda’s 2025 performance impressive isn’t just that it built more cars—it’s what kinds of cars it built. Gasoline, hybrid, and electric vehicles all rolling down the same lines. European volume, Indian growth, and Southeast Asian expansion. Old-school engines next to battery packs.

In an industry obsessed with choosing sides, Skoda is winning by refusing to. And right now, that flexibility looks like a very smart bet.

Source: Škoda

Lexus’s 2025 Scorecard Shows the Luxury Brand Is Winning Where It Matters Most

By any reasonable measure, 2025 was a banner year for Lexus. The Toyota luxury arm closed the books with 882,231 global deliveries, the best annual result in its history and a tidy 4-percent improvement over 2024. In a luxury market that’s still wobbling between EV uncertainty and SUV saturation, Lexus didn’t just survive—it quietly thrived.

And it did so the old-fashioned way: by selling a lot of vehicles people actually want.

North America Does the Heavy Lifting

If there’s a single takeaway from Lexus’s 2025 performance, it’s this: America (and Canada) still love their Lexus SUVs. North America accounted for a massive 408,070 sales, up nearly 8 percent year over year, and almost half of Lexus’s global volume.

The usual suspects did most of the work. The RX, NX, and TX—three flavors of plush, reliable, family-friendly crossovers—were the backbone of that growth. None of them are headline-grabbing supercars or radical EVs, but together they form one of the most commercially bulletproof lineups in the luxury space.

While Europe slipped slightly, dropping about 2.3 percent to 80,686 units, Lexus didn’t seem to mind. Its real momentum came from regions that matter for scale and stability.

Asia Holds Steady, China Stays Strong

Across Asia, Lexus sold 237,946 vehicles, essentially flat but impressively resilient in a market that’s becoming brutally competitive—especially in China. There, Lexus moved 182,458 units, edging up just enough to show that traditional premium brands can still coexist with fast-moving domestic EV startups.

Japan, meanwhile, ticked up to 87,418 sales, boosted by a combination of home-market loyalty and the brand’s 20th anniversary celebrations. It’s not explosive growth, but for a mature luxury marque, slow and steady is exactly what you want.

Elsewhere, Lexus quietly picked up momentum in Oceania (+6.7 percent), the Middle East (+1.4 percent), and even Africa (+18.8 percent)—small numbers, sure, but signs of a brand that’s expanding its footprint in every corner of the globe.

Tech, Electrification, and a New Lexus Attitude

Sales numbers alone don’t tell the full story of why Lexus is riding high. 2025 was also the year the brand began pivoting more decisively into its next-generation electrified era.

The fully redesigned ES, positioned as a cornerstone of Lexus’s future lineup, introduced a new design and tech philosophy aimed at blending comfort with electrified efficiency. Meanwhile, the new RZ debuted steer-by-wire, a bold move that suggests Lexus is finally ready to get experimental with its EVs.

At the Japan Mobility Show 2025, Lexus doubled down on that forward-looking attitude, showing off a slate of concept cars and unveiling a new brand message: “DISCOVER.” It’s corporate-speak, sure—but it also signals a shift from Lexus’s traditionally conservative image toward something more emotionally driven and experience-focused.

A Quietly Confident Luxury Powerhouse

Lexus didn’t top the headlines in 2025 with wild performance EVs or ultra-luxury flagships. Instead, it did something arguably harder: it grew in a complicated, transitional market by selling well-engineered, desirable vehicles across nearly every region on Earth.

With record global sales, a reinvigorated product plan, and a clearer vision for electrification, Lexus enters 2026 not as a legacy brand playing defense—but as one that’s increasingly confident about what comes next.

And if this is what Lexus looks like while playing it safe, its more adventurous future might be worth paying attention to.

Source: Lexus

Škoda Tops One Million Sales, Rises to Europe’s No. 3 Brand

If there’s a quiet achiever in Europe’s automotive landscape, it’s Škoda—and in 2025, the Czech brand decided to stop being so quiet about it. With 1,043,900 vehicles delivered worldwide, Škoda not only posted its strongest sales result in six years but also muscled its way into third place overall in Europe, its core market. That’s not a niche victory or a footnote win—that’s a podium finish in one of the world’s toughest automotive arenas.

Europe accounted for the lion’s share of the momentum, with 836,200 deliveries across the EU27+4 region, up nearly 10 percent year over year. Germany remained the brand’s anchor market, clearing 211,000 sales, while solid gains in the Czech Republic, the UK, Poland, and France reinforced Škoda’s reputation as a mainstream brand that’s finally being treated like one.

But the real story here isn’t just volume—it’s what Škoda is selling.

One in Four Comes with a Plug

Škoda’s sales surge is increasingly electrified. More than 25 percent of all vehicles delivered in Europe were either battery-electric or plug-in hybrids, a year-over-year increase that borders on explosive. That shift pushed Škoda to fourth place among Europe’s EV manufacturers, a remarkable achievement for a brand that, not long ago, was still seen primarily as the sensible cousin in the Volkswagen Group family.

Leading the charge is the Elroq, a compact electric SUV that finished 2025 as Europe’s second best-selling EV overall—and number one in markets like Denmark, the Netherlands, Slovakia, and Škoda’s home turf. The larger Enyaq didn’t exactly loaf around either, landing seventh overall and cracking the top three in several EV-friendly countries. Combined, Škoda delivered nearly 175,000 BEVs in Europe alone, with global electrified deliveries more than doubling to 218,700 units.

In short: this isn’t a compliance-car strategy. It’s real demand.

Familiar Nameplates, Still Doing the Heavy Lifting

Even as electrification accelerates, Škoda hasn’t abandoned the formula that got it here. The Octavia remains the brand’s top seller worldwide, with over 190,000 deliveries in 2025 and a milestone moment—one million fourth-generation units sold since its 2020 launch. SUVs continue to dominate the supporting cast, with the Kodiaq, Kamiq, Fabia, and Karoq all posting six-figure results.

This balance—traditional internal-combustion stalwarts alongside credible EVs—is exactly what Škoda’s leadership means when it talks about “freedom of choice.” And judging by the numbers, customers agree.

India, ASEAN, and the Long Game

Škoda’s growth isn’t confined to Europe. India nearly doubled its deliveries to 70,600 vehicles, driven largely by the locally produced Kylaq SUV. Production expansion in Vietnam and entry into Saudi Arabia underline a strategy that’s less about flash and more about durable, region-specific growth.

Not every market cooperated—China continues to slide—but the broader picture points to a brand that’s diversifying its risk and widening its footprint at the right time.

What Comes Next

If 2025 was about validation, 2026 looks like escalation. Škoda will debut two new fully electric models: the Epiq, an urban crossover aimed squarely at affordability, and the Peaq, a seven-seat family SUV positioned as the brand’s electric flagship. Together, they’ll double Škoda’s EV portfolio and push the brand deeper into territory once dominated by more premium badges.

Škoda didn’t get here by reinventing the car. It got here by doing the basics extremely well—then electrifying them at exactly the right pace. In an industry obsessed with disruption, that might be the most disruptive strategy of all.

Source: Škoda