Last year, Toyota once again overtook the Volkswagen Group to emerge as the best-selling automaker in the world. VW will hardly be panicking, though, as 2020 was severely disrupted by the pandemic and the company still sold 9.31 million vehicles. VW, like many other automakers, is in a transition phase where electric vehicles are taking over. Last year, the company's EV sales tripled.

But new forecasts show a really interesting development in 2021: VW's EV sales could dramatically close the gap between it and Tesla this year. According to The Detroit News, VW wants battery-electric cars to make up between six and eight percent of its total sales in 2021.

Based on last year's sales - and assuming that eight percent of the total will be EVs this year - that would see VW sell in the region of 745,000 EVs. Over at Tesla, Elon Musk's company is anticipating 50 percent growth this year, which should amount to 750,000 vehicles.

If Tesla underperforms and VW does better than expected, it's feasible that the German giant could sell more EVs this year. The best way for VW to do this, quite simply, is to expand its EV portfolio. This expansion got underway last year when VW took the covers off the 250-mile ID.4 crossover.

The ID.4 followed the smaller ID.3 hatchback which will be sold in Europe but not in North America. The ID.3 only went on sale in the third quarter of last year but managed to sell 56,500 units, more than the e-Golf. Other expected EVs from within the VW Group include the Audi Q4 e-tron. In total, VW sold 212,000 EVs throughout 2020.

For Tesla, the big news late this year will be the planned launch of the divisive Cybertruck, which could perform well in truck-loving America. However, the Cybertruck won't have much time to dramatically inflate Tesla's sales total for 2021. In around a year from now, we'll be able to see whether Tesla has maintained its lead or if VW's brace of new EVs performs even better than expected.