The carmaker bmw has achieved higher sales of e-cars in North America in the first half of the year than in the whole of 2022. 17,964 fully electric vehicles were sold, the German carmaker announced on Wednesday. The electric vehicles make up 12.9 percent of BMW brand sales in the second quarter, it said. Sales of the BMW brand rose 11.5 percent year-on-year in the three months from April to June.
competitor Volkswagen (VW), on the other hand, suffered losses. In the three months, 76,934 vehicles of the VW brand were delivered, said the Wolfsburg carmaker. That was a decrease of 1.7 percent compared to the previous year. The carmaker’s US business has been in crisis for some time. VW boss Oliver Blume (55) wants to take countermeasures with billions in investments. In the US, Volkswagen is building a new plant to build Scout pickups and a gigafactory in Canada to produce battery cells there in the future.
By 2030, the group’s US market share should increase from the current 5 to at least 10 percent.
The VW subsidiary Audi shone, however, with an increase in sales of 15.7 percent to 55,582 cars. Last year, Audi sales fell to 187,000 cars.
GM and Toyota increase sales
Toyota Motor’s North American subsidiary (TMNA), meanwhile, reported a 7.1 percent increase in U.S. sales to 568,962 units for the quarter ended June. The US rival General Motors(GM), however, surpassed this with an increase of almost 19 percent to a total of 691,978 units. Among them were 15,652 electric vehicles (EV). The sales figures indicate that the rise in interest rates in the USA has not yet had an impact on the willingness of citizens to buy.
In the US, demand for e-cars in particular will grow rapidly in the coming years, with strong government support. Industry experts expect that by 2030, one in five new cars in the US will be electric. Annual sales should increase to over 6.3 million electric cars by then.