The BMW Group’s had a bittersweet first half of the year. On one hand, sales of purely electric vehicles more than doubled as BMW and MINI delivered 75,891 EVs through June or 110.3% more than in H1 2021. Adding plug-in hybrids into the mix, deliveries of electrified vehicles went up by 20.4% to 184,553 units. In addition, Rolls-Royce enjoyed a 6.8% boost in sales in the first six months of 2022.

On the other hand, the BMW Group suffered a 13.3% decline in deliveries, with 1,160,443 units shipped to customers in H1 2022. The core BMW brand saw its sales go down by 13.7% to 1,016,541 vehicles while MINI dropped by 10.9% to 140,711 cars. As far as the M division is concerned, which also takes into account sales of M Performance cars, it delivered 81,198 cars or 2.6% less than in the same period of last year. BMW Motorrad remained virtually flat, a -0.1% change to 107,555 motorcycles.

BMW wishes to point out that despite this double-digit drop, it’s still the best-selling automaker in the premium segment. Looking at how the Group fared in various regions of the world, the biggest decline occurred in China where deliveries went down by 18.9%, followed by Asia (-14.7%) and Europe (-13.9%). At home in Germany, provisional figures show shipments were down by 12.4% to 124,350 units.

These lower numbers are not exclusively because of weaker demand. Supply shortages are still affecting the BMW Group’s day-to-day operations, which is having repercussions on wait times. Some customers are simply not willing to wait so long for a new car and decide to switch to a different brand that can deliver a car sooner.

Prioritizing sales of bigger and more expensive vehicles with higher profit margins means an automaker ends up selling fewer cars while still making good money. There’s more to these sales charts than just the raw numbers, especially in these hectic times when companies are pulling out all the stops to deliver as many vehicles as possible. The more expensive these cars are, the better the financial reports will look at the end of the fiscal year.

Source: BMW