The German premium manufacturers BMW and Mercedes Benz are increasingly struggling with weak sales in their most important market China. BMW deliveries from July to September fell by almost 30 percent to just under 148,000 vehicles compared to the same period last year. The brand with the star sold 13 percent fewer vehicles at 170,700, meaning that China performed weaker than the other regions of the world.
Competition for electric cars is growing
While the overall market in China has been in decline for months, there are… Electric cars a boom thanks to government purchasing incentives. However, this misses the German manufacturers because the Chinese competition comes up with lower prices and smaller, more affordable models. This is how the world’s leading electric car manufacturer increased its sales BYD In September, sales of pure electric cars and hybrids increased by a good 45 percent to almost 418,000 cars.
Also Tesla announced that in September it had reached a monthly peak this year with 72,000 cars sold with 66 percent growth. The combustion-heavy car manufacturer SAIC, on the other hand, sold around a third fewer cars last month than a year ago.
Brake problems at BMW
BMW also suffered from a delivery stop in the past quarter due to Problems with a brake system from the supplier Continental
. As a result, around 320,000 finished new cars cannot currently be delivered. Sales fell by 13 percent from July to September to just over 540,000 vehicles. In the first nine months, sales fell by 4.5 percent to a good 1.75 million cars. While things went down in Asia and America, the Munich-based company with the BMW, Mini and Rolls-Royce brands increased by 1.4 percent in Europe.
With 503,600 deliveries in the third quarter, Mercedes-Benz was just below the previous year and still well behind the global premium market leader BMW. So far this year, Mercedes’ passenger car sales are 4 percent below the previous year at 1.46 million units. Similar to BMW, the Stuttgart car maker had under Delivery problems from the supplier Bosch suffered last year – this traffic jam for important models is now clearing up.
Sales of EQ models from Mercedes are collapsing
Bavarians and Swabians live in different worlds on the electric car market. The BMW Group continues to celebrate success with models such as the iX1 and the E-Mini, with an increase of 10 percent in the quarter and a 19 percent increase over the course of the year to 294,000 electric cars. “Our fully electric vehicles impress our customers worldwide – the clear double-digit BEV growth in the first nine months of the year proves this,” said BMW sales manager Jochen Goller (58).
For Mercedes-Benz, however, the third quarter with the EQ models was a fiasco – sales fell by 31 percent to 42,500 vehicles. At the end of September, almost 136,000 battery-powered cars were delivered to customers, a good fifth fewer than in the same period last year. Things are going better for plug-in hybrids – Mercedes achieved 10 percent growth in the quarter, mainly thanks to strong demand in the USA.
In Germany The Chinese providers were able to decide after an analysis by the management consultancy EY Meanwhile, do not escape the decline in electric cars. In the third quarter, sales in this country fell by a total of 45 percent. The market share of Chinese brands fell from 10 to 8 percent, while German car manufacturers together increased from 40 to 57 percent – mainly thanks to growth at BMW.