According to a report by Automotive News, BMW Group is confident that Tesla’s reign over the electric vehicle market is over. The German carmaker has invested heavily into electrification, and its latest sales results show that sales of its EVs have increased by 149.2% in the first quarter of 2022, compared to the same period last year.
Speaking to the publication, BMW Group sales chief Pieter Nota said that Tesla “had a unique selling point for some time. That’s over.” This year, BMW aims to sell 200,000 EVs, which is double what it achieved last year.
BMW Group is also looking to have 50% of all cars sold be fully electric by 2030. This will be supported by a comprehensive line-up of EVs, which in the United States, currently includes iX and i4, both of which have seen filled order books.
These will be joined by the soon-to-be-revealed i7 as well as all-electric versions of the 5 Series and MINI Countryman due in 2023. “We will push the company to the limits of production capability,” BMW CEO Oliver Zipse said last week. “Demand will be surging. We already see that with the iX, with the i4,” he added.
In the US last year, Tesla closely edged out BMW to take the luxury automaker crown, and the EV maker has had a good start to 2022 by selling 71,250 vehicles in the first two months compared to BMW’s 54,210 vehicles. Cox Automotive reported that in 2021, Tesla sold 352,471 cars in the US, while BMW sold 336,644 vehicles.
Even so, supply chain issues continue to impact the industry and could affect BMW’s ability to meet demand. “Our expectation is it will last well into 2022. We probably will see some relaxation in 2023,” said Nota.
Despite calling out Tesla, BMW has not yet make the switch to fully electric and will still offer internal combustion engines (with at least some form of electrification) moving forward. “If you want to be resilient, you have to be flexible. We think the [EV] infrastructure will not move as fast as market demand,” Zipse said.
Looking to sell your car? Sell it with Carro.
TBH, BMW and its buyers thought EV is just about driving range per charge cycle, I feel they’re too shallow. Tesla is much smarter in design and technology. Tesla known as car company but fact was, it’s an IT company, collecting data since drivers start off their vehicle. BMW yea, purely engineering, still.
its good to dream. TESLA will make new tech and cars by the time others catch up. reminds me when the European head of EC team in Geely said his platform is better than Tesla. they are all reserve engineer and tear down Tesla cars to copy them.
Didn’t BMW designers think for space allocation for plate no in designing their EVs ? That registration number placement look hideous
Mr. Pieter, Elon have always said he wants all the auto manufacturers to get into EV and is also willing to share Tesla knowledge for free. He has no intention of being the top in EV sales. He got to the top because he was the first to go in big.
Besides, he’s moved on to rockets if you haven’t noticed.