Volkswagen said Sunday that its namesake brand sold more vehicles worldwide in 2017 than ever before, a sign it is recovering from a bruising emissions-cheating scandal three years ago.

“We finished 2017 with the best performance ever for Volkswagen,” Herbert Diess, chairman of the board of management of the Volkswagen passenger cars brand, said Sunday night at the Detroit Auto Show.

Global sales rose 4.2 percent to 6.2 million, with sales in China jumping 5.9 percent to 3.2 million, more than half the total sold globally.

Other countries with strong gains in terms of percentages included the United States, Russia and Brazil, although all of these countries are much smaller markets for VW than China.

VW’s sales dropped 0.1 percent in Europe, due in part to a 4.7 percent fall in Germany.

Diess reiterated VW’s apology over the dieselgate scandal that has cost it billions of dollars in settlements and government probes.

VW released the figures ahead of the launch of an updated version of the Jetta, its top-selling vehicle in the US. The base price of $18,545 won especially loud applause at a glitzy launch Sunday night.

The Jetta is among just a handful of sedans being launched at the 2018 show, which is dominated by pickup trucks and other large vehicles that have been outselling smaller cars in recent years in the US.

“As a full-line automaker family oriented, you need to have a competitive strong sedan,” VW North American chief executive Hinrich Woebcken told reporters after the launch.

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“We are reinventing the car,” chief executive Matthias Mueller said after a meeting of the group’s supervisory board.

The bulk of the 2018-2022 spending spree would go on developing electric and hybrid cars, the VW group said in a statement, as well as self-driving cars, new mobility services such as car-sharing, and digitalisation.

Like other traditional carmakers, Volkswagen is stepping up its focus on the cleaner, smarter vehicles of the future, racing to catch up with US tech giant Tesla which has a head-start in the area.

The pivot to zero-emissions cars is particularly important for Volkswagen, the world’s largest automaker, as it seeks to shake off a global emissions cheating scandal that shone a spotlight on polluting diesel engines.

The VW group, owner of 12 brands including Audi, Porsche and Skoda, announced in September that it planned to electrify its entire fleet by 2030 — promising fully electric or hybrid versions of some 300 models.

At its meeting on Friday, the group’s supervisory board signed off on an overall five-year spending plan totalling “more than 70 billion euros”, a spokesman told AFP.

That is slightly lower than the 2015-2019 investments announced in 2014, when the group pledged to spend nearly 86 billion euros.

VW had previously warned that it would tighten the purse strings as it grapples with the ongoing fallout from the “dieselgate” scandal, which has so far cost it over 25 billion euros in fines, recalls and compensation.

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