BMW main plant in Munich
Production recently had to be interrupted several times.
(Photo: dpa)
Material bottlenecks due to the war in Ukraine and a corona lockdown in China weighed on BMW’s sales in the first quarter. The carmaker spoke of a highly volatile environment on Thursday. Overall, the Munich company sold 596,907 vehicles in the first three months, 6.2 percent less than a year ago.
However, there was a strong upward trend for electric cars: “In the first quarter we succeeded in accelerating our high growth rate from 2021 again,” said Pieter Nota, BMW Board Member for Sales. “We are therefore fully on course to meet our ambitious growth targets for fully electric vehicles in 2022 as well.”
A total of 35,289 fully electric vehicles from the BMW and Mini brands were handed over to customers, which corresponds to an increase of almost 150 percent. For the year as a whole, the Munich-based company plans to more than double sales of electric cars compared to 2021.
New models should also contribute to this: by the end of the year, the number of electric models should rise to 15, and 90 percent of the current segments should be covered, including pre-series vehicles. In addition to the 7 Series, this also includes the high-volume 3 Series, 5 Series, X1 and X3. By the end of 2025, BMW wants to have more than two million fully electric vehicles on the road.
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After the outbreak of war in the Ukraine, BMW had to cut production temporarily because there were no wiring harnesses manufactured in the Eastern European country.
This is noticeable in the sales figures: In Europe, BMW sold 220,076 vehicles, 7.8 percent less, in Germany the minus was even 9.4 percent to 61,552 vehicles. In Asia, on the other hand, corona restrictions played a role. Here, sales fell by 7.9 percent to 264,235 units, of which 208,507 cars were sold in China itself, 9.2 percent fewer than a year ago. On the other hand, things looked better in America, where sales increased by 2.9 percent to 98,718 vehicles.
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