The Volkswagen Group says that it is making faster progress towards sustainable and efficient production while also making good progress towards reducing its production costs.

We are producing more environmentally friendly than ever. From 2010 to the end of 2019, the environmental impact per produced vehicle is expected to drop by more than 37%.

—Oliver Blume, Member of the Board of Management of the Volkswagen Group and Chairman of the Board of Porsche AG

To address offsetting trends, performance measures estimated at one billion euros are also being made in production, and productivity is increasing by six per cent. At the same time, however, Blume emphasizes that further efficiency measures must not be neglected.

In pursuing the target of halving the environmental impact of production by 2025, Volkswagen Group is certainly in a better position now than planned, having attained a 37% reduction.

—Oliver Blume

Five criteria flow into the assessment of environmental impact per vehicle:

1. CO₂ emissions,
2. Energy use
3. Water use
4. Solvent use
5. Generated waste

In the past two years alone, CO₂ emissions per vehicle were reduced by more than 10%.

The Group is also making good progress towards attaining the target of improving manufacturing productivity by 30% over the period 2016 to 2025. This year, productivity is expected to be 6% above the prior year level, and it is production sites outside of Germany which have made the most significant contributions here. The improvement is better than originally planned.

Inter-brand knowledge transfer and close cooperation are key factors of success in achieving further productivity increases and in reducing costs and investments. We have 122 Group production sites worldwide. This production network offers tremendous potential for synergies. We continue to implement our production strategy measures systematically.

—Oliver Blume