(Bloomberg) — BMW AG said sales declined nearly 20% in the second quarter even as electric-vehicle deliveries surged in the same period.
The Munich-based carmaker said Friday its sales dropped to about 563,536 BMW, Mini and Rolls Royce vehicles, including a 28% decline in China. In Europe and the US, sales fell by about one-fifth.
Despite the overall drop, deliveries of electric vehicles more than doubled in the first half of the year, compared to 2021. BMW said it’s on course to meet its target of doubling EV sales this year.
BMW and its rivals have shifted production to higher-margin models and as output has been hampered by the semiconductor shortage and other supply-chain problems. At the same time, automakers are ramping up their EV production and sales.
Last year, the luxury-car maker navigated the chip shortage comparatively better than its competitors. In the first three months of 2022, BMW’s deliveries declined at half the rate of peers Mercedes-Benz AG and Volkswagen AG’s premium brand Audi.
The industry is still feeling the pain of supply-chain disruptions and shortages of components such as semiconductors. BMW’s production chief Milan Nedeljkovic said in May that he is confident the company will meet the output targets it set at the beginning of the year.
Intermittent Covid lockdowns dealt a significant blow to sales in China, where deliveries fell by 28% to 170,220 vehicles during the second quarter. In Europe, sales of BMW and Mini vehicles declined by 19.4% to 213,913 vehicles, while US sales slumped 20.6% to 84,036.
BMW is expanding its range of fully-electric vehicles this year with the i7 luxury sedan, the iX1 compact SUV and an i3 sedan in China. From January to June, the carmaker’s sales of fully-electric BMWs and Mini brand cars rose 110% to 75,891 vehicles world-wide. BMW said it has now more than 34,000 orders across Europe for its fully-electric i4 coupe.
(Updates with additional sales data beginning in second paragraph.)
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