Volkswagen AG, or Volkswagen Group, is a German multinational conglomerate automotive manufacturer headquartered in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. Since the late 2000s, it has been a publicly traded family business owned by Porsche SE, which in turn is half-owned but fully controlled by the Austrian-German Porsche-Piëch family. The company also offers financing, leasing, and fleet management services. In 2024, it was the world's second-largest automaker by sales. It has maintained the largest market share in Europe for over two decades. It ranked 11th in the 2024 Fortune Global 500 list of the world's largest companies. In 2024, Volkswagen Group was the largest company in the European Union and the largest car manufacturer in the world by revenue.
The Volkswagen Group sells passenger cars under the Audi, Bentley, Cupra, Jetta, Lamborghini, Porsche, SEAT, Škoda and Volkswagen brands, motorcycles under the Ducati name, light commercial vehicles under the Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles brand, and heavy commercial vehicles via the marques of the listed subsidiary Traton (International Motors, MAN, Scania and Volkswagen Truck & Bus). Software and techstack under CARIAD. It is divided into two primary divisions: the Automotive Division and the Financial Services Division. As of 2008, it had about 342 subsidiary companies. Volkswagen also has three joint ventures in China, FAW-Volkswagen, SAIC Volkswagen and Volkswagen Anhui. The company has operations in roughly 150 countries, and it has 100 production facilities across 27 countries.
Volkswagen was founded in Berlin in 1937 and incorporated in Wolfsburg to manufacture the car that would become known as the Beetle. The company's production grew rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1965, it acquired Auto Union, which subsequently produced the first postwar Audi models. Volkswagen launched a new generation of front-wheel drive vehicles in the 1970s, including the Passat, Polo and Golf; the latter became its bestseller. Volkswagen acquired a controlling stake in SEAT in 1986, making it the first non-German marque of the company, and acquired control of Škoda in 1994, of Bentley, Lamborghini, and Bugatti in 1998, Scania in 2008 and of Ducati, MAN, and Porsche in 2012. The company's operations in China have grown rapidly in the 2010s, with the country becoming its largest market. However, sales in China have declined significantly in the 2020s.
In 2015, Volkswagen was discovered to have used defeat devices to deceive environmental regulators about how much NOx its cars were emitting. The company was fined over US$30 billion (€26.8 billion).
