With 253,840 cars delivered in the first nine months of the year, BMW is down by 0.2% in the United States. Even so, the company is confident the final quarter of 2024 will be strong enough to tip the scales in its favor. BMW of North America CEO Sebastian Mackensen projects the luxury brand will post record annual sales by beating its 2023 performance.
Speaking with Automotive News, Mackensen admitted that August and September were bad for business because of the integrated brake module issue. In addition, BMW overestimated the adoption of electric vehicles in the US. Despite these hurdles, the company expects to end 2024 on a high note to set a new sales record.
EVs represented almost 15% of total deliveries in the US in the first three quarters of the year. Compared to the same period of 2023, BMW USA’s electric sales shot up by 20%. Mackensen says the company managed to ship more zero-emission cars without cutting prices. Instead, it rolled out more attainable leases.
Targeting record sales in 2024, it certainly helps that deliveries to customers of the new X3 are underway. A further boost would likely come from the plug-in hybrid but the X3 30e xDrive is not coming to the US, at least not for now. Even in its final year, the G01 was still the most popular product in the US through September. The luxury crossover was the best-selling model with 49,908 units, ahead of the larger X5 with 46,025 examples. The last place on the podium was occupied by the 4 Series lineup with 31,354 cars.
Globally, BMW is down by 2.3% so far this year. Initially, the Munich-based automaker was hoping for sales to top those of 2023. However, the brake fault also impacts 320,000 new cars that haven’t been delivered yet. Consequently, the outlook for 2024 has suffered a setback since BMW believes sales will be slightly lower than last year.
Source: Automotive News
