11:16 am, April 8, 2021
BMW Group has posted record Q1 sales in 2021, delivering 636,606 vehicles to customers.
This represents a 33.5 per cent increase on the same period in 2020 for the German firm, which incorporates sales from BMW, Mini and Rolls-Royce.
It also reports that it saw year-on-year sales increases in all major markets.
The majority of deliveries came through BMW, which sold 560,543 in the first three months of the year, up 36.2 per cent. This was said to be driven by the popularity of the firm’s X range of SUVs, as well as 5 Series and 3 Series sales increasing by more than 40 per cent.
Mini also had a strong quarter, increasing sales by 16.2 per cent and shifting 74,683 vehicles, as well as seeing sales increase in every region it sells in. The Countryman was its best-selling model with an increase of 36 per cent, while 15 per cent of sales went to electrified models.
UK-based Rolls-Royce also posted its record Q1, delivering 1,380 cars for a year-on-year increase of 61.8 per cent.
Pieter Nota, BMW board member responsible for customer, brands and sales, said: ‘We continued our growth momentum in the first quarter of this year, selling more vehicles than ever before in this period.
‘This all-time high in sales underlines our ambitious growth targets for the year.
‘Our sales performance was boosted by strong demand for our electrified vehicles, in particular.
‘In the past three months, we doubled our global sales of electrified vehicles compared to the same period last year.
‘This puts us on track to deliver more than 100,000 fully-electric vehicles this year, with at least a million electrified vehicles on the roads in total by the end of this year.”
BMW Group delivered 70,207 electric and plug-in hybrid models in the first three months of 2021, with the now-established electric BMW i3 and Mini Cooper being joined recently in Europe by the BMW iX3.
With the BMW iX and i4 joining the lineup this year, it’s likely electrified models will continue to take a bigger chunk of the sales share.
