If the rest of the year goes like February, BMW Group shareholders are going to be very happy: Total sales in the BMW Group’s best-ever February were up 5.8% over the same month in 2017. The 178,910 BMW, Mini, and Rolls-Royce vehicles delivered brought total Group sales for the first two months of 2018 to 348,459 units, a 4.8% jump from last year.
Both the February figures and the year-to-date totals are all-time sales records for those periods. This was a team win for the company, as all major sales regions demonstrated positive growth—including the United States, which was not the norm for much of 2017.
“The BMW brand achieved a solid sales increase of 5.1% in February, with all major sales regions making a positive contribution to this result,” said Pieter Nota, BMW AG’s Board of Management member for sales and Brand BMW. “This is a big year for our popular X models; the all-new BMW X2 is just arriving in showrooms, and at the motor show in Geneva last week, we premiered the new X4. Together with the BMW X3, which will see significantly increased availability in the second half of the year, I’m sure our X family will continue to be an important growth driver in the coming months. Another significant growth area is electromobility; with a year-to-date sales increase of over 40%, momentum is clearly building strongly for our electrified vehicles,” Nota concluded.
The sale of electrified vehicles is high on the BMW Group’s list of priorities, since it has suggested a target of 140,000 such vehicles to be sold in 2018. February is a little early to make predictions, but the company believes that it is on track to meet that goal with worldwide deliveries of electrified BMWs and Minis totaling 15,041.
The United States is BMW’s largest market for electrified vehicles and in February, sales of 1,936 BMW i, i-Performance, and electrified Minis constituted 7.3% of total BMW Group sales here. Percentage-wise, we have a way to go, as in Scandinavia, a full 25% of all BMW Group vehicles sold in February were electrified; worldwide, 7,906 BMW Group electrified vehicles were sold in February, which was a whopping 43.9% above the same period last year.
Gains made by BMW-brand vehicles in February were very solid, up 5.1% globally to 155,328 units; that makes 303,738 BMWs sold worldwide so far this year. The models leading the charge included the 1 Series, with a 33.2% increase; the X1, up 22.5%; and the 5 Series, with a 13.6% increase.
The happiness extended as well to Mini, the February sales of which were up 10.8% to 23,319. The Mini Countryman maintained its accustomed top spot, with more than half of all global Mini sales. And Mini pitched in to the electrified totals, as 13% of all Mini Countryman cars sold were plug-in hybrids.
BMW Motorrad continued to stretch its sales with 10,172 BMW motorcycles and maxi-scooters delivered in February, a 3.1% increase over the same month in 2016.
The proliferation of new models like the new X2, along with sales of the third-generation X3, should keep the good times rolling in the near term.—Scott Blazey
[Photos courtesy of BMW AG.]
