Auto industry: Slight decline in sales at BMW

BMW suffered a slight decline in sales in 2024. Overall, deliveries fell by 4 percent to 2.45 million cars, as the manufacturer announced. Demand was particularly subdued in China. In addition, BMW suffered from delivery bans in the second half of the year due to problems with a braking system.

The core brand BMW had 2.2 million deliveries. That was a minus of 2.3 percent. Subsidiary Mini performed significantly weaker with 245,000 cars and a decline of 17 percent. At Rolls-Royce, 5,712 cars meant a decline of 5.3 percent.

Things went worse for BMW, especially in China. 715,000 cars at group level corresponded to a decrease of 13 percent. The market was also a problem for other manufacturers. In the USA and Europe, however, the Munich-based company was able to increase its deliveries slightly.

Growth among electric vehicles

However, things are going much better for BMW when it comes to electromobility. There is an increase of 13.5 percent in pure electric cars to 427,000 cars. Sales director Jochen Goller was confident that this growth would continue in 2025.

The competition is sometimes doing much worse. At Audi, deliveries of the core brand fell by 12 percent to 1.67 million in 2024. Mercedes-Benz Cars recently reported a 3 percent decline to 1.98 million, which, however, also includes several thousand Smart brand vehicles. Including vans, Mercedes-Benz came to 2.39 million, a decrease of 4 percent. The group does not only provide figures for core brand cars. Porsche lost three percent to 310,700 vehicles.