German carmaker Audi still in reverse – but more slowly

US tariffs and the discount war on the Chinese car market have weighed on German car manufacturer Audi's sales.

In the first nine months of the year, the VW subsidiary delivered around 1.18 million cars, 4.8% fewer than in the same period a year ago, the company announced on Friday.

However, the decline is slowing down, with the shortfall being at 5.9% at the half-year point. Looking at the third quarter alone, deliveries fell only slightly, by 2.6%.

Overall, Audi's largest market, China, weighed particularly heavily on the figures, with a decline of 9% to 434,435 cars in the first nine months.

Other German manufacturers are also suffering there from very tough competition in China, with some high discounts being offered by domestic suppliers. Audi is hoping that models tailored to the Chinese market, which were launched in the summer, will gradually have an impact on volume.

However, Audi also lost 5.1% of its sales in North America, delivering only 155,644 cars there from January to September. The company blamed a challenging environment there created by tariffs.

In Europe, sales fell by 4.2% to 340,601 cars, but the company said there was a significant increase in new orders from western Europe.

The situation was much more positive for electric cars. Here, the current year has seen a substantial increase of over 41% to 163,433 cars. In the third quarter alone, the increase was almost 59%. This means that Audi is significantly reducing the gap with its Bavarian competitor BMW.

The increase is due to significant growth in Germany, the rest of Europe and North America. In China, however, electric car sales fell significantly, by almost 18%.