The year didn’t start off on the best note for BMW in its home market. Shipments slipped by 1.3% to 61,264 units, according to provisional registration figures. But a deeper dive into the data from the Federal Motor Transport Authority (Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt, or KBA) reveals some interesting trends. While electric vehicles continue to gain traction, diesel’s popularity is steadily fading.

Back in the first quarter of 2023, diesels accounted for 39.7% of BMW’s sales in Germany. Fast forward to Q1 2025, and that figure has dropped to just over 30%. Meanwhile, EVs are moving in the opposite direction. Pure electric models represented 9.16% of sales in Q1 2023 but climbed to more than 19% this past quarter. That means nearly one in five cars sold by BMW on its home turf between January and March was fully electric.

While many automakers have started phasing out diesel engines, BMW isn’t one of them. From the 1 Series and X1 all the way up to the 7 Series and X7, diesel options remain available. Heck, you can still buy an 8 Series 840d in 2025. So the drop in diesel share isn’t due to fewer models being offered; it’s a clear sign that customer preferences are shifting toward EVs.

Indeed, for the first time, BMW registered over 10,000 fully electric vehicles in a single quarter in Germany. Unsurprisingly, the iX1, i4, and i5 did the heavy lifting. BMW has also benefitted from Tesla’s recent struggles, as the American automaker saw a dramatic 62.2% sales drop. Tesla sold just 4,935 cars in Q1 2025 in Deutschland, while BMW delivered more than double that number, at 10,315 EVs.

What about gasoline models? They still make up the largest portion of BMW’s sales, but their share is shrinking: from 42.58% in Q1 2023 to 37.42% this year. Plug-in hybrids, on the other hand, are on the rise, jumping from 8.56% to 13.5%.

We imagine BMW will kick its EV sales into higher gear with the arrival of the Neue Klasse. We won’t see an impact in this year’s shipments because deliveries of the new iX3 are unlikely to kick off worldwide until later in 2026. That’s when we’ll also see the i3 sedan. Both, especially the crossover, should significantly increase the share of EVs in total deliveries next year.