BMW Group, following its best-ever first-quarter sales results, has announced that there are more than a quarter of a million of its electrified vehicles on road after strong April sales growth.

The company revealed that a total of 194,889 BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce vehicles were delivered to customers in April, a slight increase (+1.2 per cent) on last year’s figure, said a statement from BMW Group.

The company also sold a total of 799,520 vehicles to customers worldwide in the first four months of the year, up 2.5 per cent on the same period last year, it said.

Pieter Nota, member of board of management of BMW AG responsible for sales and Brand BMW, said: “Combined sales of our electric vehicles which includes BMW i, BMW iPerformance and MINI Electric vehicles were up 52 per cent in April (9,831), bringing the total number of electrified cars sold to over 250,000.”

“We are well on track to deliver on our stated target to sell over 140,000 electrified vehicles this year,” he added.

In the first four months of the year, BMW Group Electrified sales totalled 36,692 units, up 41.7 per cent on the same period last year. This considerable growth in electrified sales was spread across many markets, including US (7,716 / +73.3 per cent), the UK (5,059 / +25.6 per cent) and Mainland China (3,181 / +646.7 per cent), said a statement.

The result in China is due to the success of the recently launched, locally produced BMW 5 Series plug-in hybrid. In April, electrified vehicles accounted for 5 per cent of global BMW Group sales, although in certain markets, that percentage is much higher, it said.

For example, in the UK, 9.0 per cent of all BMW Group sales are electrified, in the US it’s 7.3 per cent. In the mature Scandinavian markets, over a quarter of all BMW Group sales are electrified and in Malaysia, electrified vehicles accounted for more than half of BMW Group sales in April, it added.

The main models driving electrified sales growth in April were the BMW 5 Series plug-in hybrid (2,670 / +711.6 per cent), the BMW X5 plug-in hybrid (1,578 / +45.8 per cent) (fuel consumption combined: 3,4-3,3 l/100 km; electricity consumption combined: 15,4 15,3 kWh/100 km; CO2 emissions combined: 78-77 g/km) and the BMW i3 (2,665 / +18.3 per cent).

Worldwide sales of BMW brand vehicles increased slightly in April (167,275 / +1.6 per cent) and deliveries in the first four months of the year also set a new all-time high level (684,724 / +2.5 per cent). This is the “Year of X” at BMW, with the ramp-up of the new BMW X3, the introduction of the all-new BMW X2 and – later in the year – the new BMW X4 and BMW X5.

In April, sales of BMW X models accounted for 36.8 per cent of total BMW brand sales and were up 11.1 per cent (61,536) compared with the same month last year. Even stronger X range sales growth is expected in the second half of the year, as availability of the new models increases, it said.

In the first four months of the year, global MINI brand sales increased by 2.8 per cent (113,704). Despite significant headwinds in the UK, the brand’s largest market, MINI sales in April (27,329 / -0.9 per cent) achieved the same high level as the previous year.

The long winter in many markets has affected growth at BMW Motorrad, where sales for the first four months of the year are down 1.1 per cent (52,957). BMW Motorrad is introducing nine new models this year, and the related adjustments in production are also affecting deliveries. Nonetheless, BMW Motorrad continues to strive for sales growth in 2018, it stated. – TradeArabia News Service