it is one of the largest car manufacturers in the world and as a result, the German automaker has many models that regularly sell very well. The Atlas is one of those models, and while the automaker has given the midsize crossover SUV its sales haven’t been looking very good lately. In fact, sales of the Volkswagen Atlas plummeted in late 2022.
The Volkswagen Atlas has been a popular SUV for many years
The segment is a popular and competitive one, and the Atlas has been Volkswagen’s mid-size crossover offering for several years. That said, it competes with other big SUVs like the Kia Telluride and Toyota Highlander. As such, according to , the Atlas was at the heart of the pack when it came to sales.
. Unfortunately for VW, that sales growth didn’t last forever and it collapsed in late 2022.
2022 has been a terrible year for Volkswagen Atlas
The supply chain issues that have hit the automotive industry since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic are still a force to be reckoned with. In 2021, automakers in the large three-row crossover segment, in which the Atlas competes, sold a total of 1.24 million units. In 2022, total sales of the segment fell to 1.1 million units. That’s a decline of more than 124,000 units, or a decline of about 11%.
Those issues have affected automakers differently, and while the segment has seen declining sales as a whole, some models have actually seen increased sales. That was the case with the Nissan Pathfinder, which grew 40% in sales year-over-year.
On the other end of the spectrum, the Atlas was one of the biggest losers, as its sales fell to 82,000 units for the year. That’s a decline of 33,000 or 29%.
It is the only model in the segment that experienced a larger sales decline, with a 30% drop. What separated Volkswagen from the pack was how quickly its sales began to decline.
In the fourth quarter of 2021, VW sold nearly 23,000 units of the Atlas. In the fourth quarter of 2022, the German automaker only sold 5,000 units. That’s the lowest sales of any model in the segment for the quarter, and it’s also a 76 percent year-over-year decline.
Volkswagen will have to solve supply chain problems before it’s too late
Overall, 2022 hasn’t been a total disaster for the Atlas, as it still sold over 80,000 units, and that’s enough to place it seventh in the segment. However, it is very worrying that VW only sold around 5,000 units of the SUV in the fourth quarter of 2022.
It’s not entirely clear what caused Volkswagen to sell so few units of the SUV in that time frame, but there have been no other models in the segment that have had a similar slump.
The Mazda CX-9 was the second best-selling SUV in the segment, but Mazda still moved 11,000 units for the quarter, double the number moved by VW. The most likely source of these problems is related to the supply chain, so VW will need to fix them before Atlas sales plummet further.
