BMW Sales Chief Pieter Nota last week told Automotive News that the company’s electric vehicle (EV) sales were seeing significant growth and that the German automaker plans to double global EV deliveries to 200,000 units this year.
EVs were a “big growth driver” for BMW in 2021, during which the luxury car brand made an all-time high of more than 2.2 million light-vehicle sales globally, said Nota.
BMW Chairman Oliver Zipse in August claimed that BMW is “growing faster than Tesla.” The latter actually came close to snatching BMW’s crown for top luxury car sales in the U.S. for 2021, selling an estimated 313,400 luxury sedans and crossovers as opposed to BMW’s 336,644.
And that was despite Tesla’s delivery numbers consisting entirely of all-electric offerings, while BMW’s sales are a mix of EVs, plug-ins, and gas guzzlers. Tesla delivered a record 936,172 EVs in 2021.
“We are very confident about doubling [EV sales] again this year when the iX and i4 will be fully available,” added Nota. BMW started delivering its all-electric iX midsize crossover and i4 four-door fastback in Europe last fall, and both models are expected to become more widely available this year.
“We see a very, very strong order book for both vehicles,” said Nota. “We are coming at the right time with these two vehicles.”
The BMW Group currently has four more EVs on its slate for the next two years. Charging infrastructure is a “key enabler” of the transition to all-electric, said Nota, which Tesla CEO Elon Musk would surely agree with.
BMW expects to deliver 2 million EVs by 2025, with its all-electrics accounting for at least 25% of total sales. By 2030, the veteran carmaker hopes to bump those numbers all the way up to 10 million and at least half of all global deliveries.
