KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 10 — By ramping up production with partner, DRB-Hicom Bhd, Volkswagen (VW) AG targets to double car sales in Malaysia to 23,000 units this year.

The DRB-Hicom plant in Pekan, Pahang, which started to produce VW’s Passat in early 2012 and Polo since October 2013, is set to roll out the Jetta model by the first half of this year, said Soh Weiming, VW President of Commercial Operations of Greater China/Asean.

Seventy per cent of the cars to be sold this year are expected to be locally produced from the Pekan plant, Soh told reporters today.

“If we can achieve that sales target this year, it shows great consumer confidence in our brand,” he said.

Over the long-term, VW plans to sell more than 50,000 cars a year in Malaysia, which has a market size of 550,000 units per year, Soh said.

VW, Europe’s biggest carmaker, has a goal of overtaking Toyota Motor Corp and General Motors Co to become the world’s largest automaker by 2018.

It wants to tap Asean’s demand for overall growth.

Soh said VW has no plans to set up a full-scale production facility in Asean but instead will assemble them locally.

In addition to its assembly plant here with DRB-Hicom, the carmaker has plans to set up assembly lines in Thailand and Indonesia, a source close to the company said. — Bernama