With the release of its Annual Report this week, the BMW Group provided more details about how it fared in 2024. The share of electric vehicles in total deliveries rose from 14.7% to 17.4%. However, there’s still a long way to go to reach 50% by the decade’s end. The automotive conglomerate pins its hopes on the Neue Klasse family of EVs. Initially, at least six models will go on sale by 2028.

In the meantime, the BMW core brand is already doing much better than its rivals in terms of the EV share in overall shipments. Only 9.33% of Mercedes vehicles delivered in 2024 had no combustion engine. Audi was in the same ballpark, with EVs accounting for 9.65% of the total volume. As previously reported, BMW EVs outsold those from Mercedes and Audi combined.

The leading BMW brand shipped 368,475 electric cars in 2024, an 11.6% jump over the previous year. Meanwhile, Mercedes sold 185,059 EVs, and Audi only just 164,000 in 2024. To BMW’s numbers, we can add 56,171 EVs sold by MINI and another 1,890 by Rolls-Royce. The BMW Group shipped 426,536 purely electric vehicles, or 13.5% more than the previous year.

While demand for pure EVs rose, deliveries of plug-in hybrids decreased by 5.6% in the case of BMW and 85% for MINI. A total of 166,614 PHEVs were delivered by the two brands. Rolls-Royce doesn’t sell vehicles that combine an internal combustion engine with an electric motor.

BMW has reasons to believe the next years will further increase the share of EVs in total sales. The iX3 due this year and the i3 in 2026 will replace existing models in high-volume segments, but there will be further additions to the lineup. The Neue Klasse will likely include an i3 Touring and an iX4, among others. Later this decade, there could also be an i1 or i2 acting as an entry-level EV. Separately, BMW is still using CLAR for a trio of EVs. The next-generation X5, X6, and X7 are also expected to spawn zero-emission derivatives.

However, despite a projected rise in electric car sales, BMW has no intention of abandoning combustion engines anytime soon. While MINI and Rolls-Royce will be fully electric by the early 2030s, Munich will keep ICE well into the next decade and possibly beyond.

Source: BMW