Porsche to increase rail usage which halves transport time

World
Europe

03:15

The German luxury carmaker Porsche has begun using rail along the Belt and Road for car shipments to China. The change shortens the vehicles' delivery time by more than three weeks, according to its CEO Oliver Blume.

In Europe, Porsche has been using the train for the delivery of its high-end cars for many years. It now does the same for shipment to China by rail along the Belt and Road. The 11,000-kilometer overland route takes cars from Germany to China's Chongqing in the southwest of the country.

Transport from the factory to the dealer by sea took more than 50 days. The CEO said that the total journey by train takes 20 days, three weeks faster than by ship.

"Shipping our cars to China cost us about 50 days. And we can reduce it more for about three weeks. I think that's very intelligent. We have about 10 to 15 percent of our cars shipping by train. That was a pilot. And its's successful, so we continue," Blume said.

CGTN Photo

Porsche in 2019

Porsche's global sales were down 12 percent in the first quarter of 2019, which was below the same period in 2018. Blume attributed that drop to the changes of VAT and changes on the engine side.

Meanwhile, the CEO expected another growth for this year, saying "last year, we have sales of 80,000 and this year the goal is 90,000. We will be even bigger than this."

The carmaker is pushing to increase efficiency and maintain its margin at 15 percent. "Our strategic goal is to maintain our profitability at about 15 percent. I think we have a very good perspective to achieve this in the future."

Porsche plans to launch its first fully electric car Taycan in September and has already registered more than 20,000 potential buyers.

"Firstly, we thought about 20,000 a year. Those were pre-orders. And we increase capacity a little bit," Blume said.