Mumbai, India (CU)_ The German carmaker BMW on Friday announced that it plans to double its fully-electric vehicle sales this year as the company and its competitors race to introduce new models to meet CO2 emission goals and catch up with market leader Tesla Inc. BMW also said that it plans to boost electric vehicle sales, including plug-in hybrids, by 50 percent compared to 2020.
The company did not reveal sales volumes for its fully electric vehicles, but according to the 2020 data released recently, BMW said it sold approximately 193,000 electrified vehicles, including fully electric and plug-in hybrid, last year. In 2020, Tesla shipped around 500,000 fully electric cars to customers.
The German carmaker BMW Group now manufactures 13 electrified vehicles that are either fully electric or plug-in hybrid. These vehicles are sold in 74 countries. BMW said its global sales of Electronic Vehicles increased by 31.8 percent in 2020 and accounted for 15 percent of its sales in Europe, which supported the company to meet its last year’s emissions targets of European Union.
BMW said that it has planned to double its electrified vehicles to 25 models, aiming more than half to be fully electric. Concerning the emission goals, the selling of new fossil-fuel vehicles will be banned by numerous countries from 2030, pushing the other carmakers to manufacture electric vehicles.