BMW Group India on Friday said it has sold 9,580 cars (BMW and MINI brands) and 6,778 two-wheelers (BMW Motorrad) during January-September 2023, both its highest ever in a nine-month period.
“We have achieved many milestones,” Vikram Pawah, president, BMW Group India, told FE.
“Recording best-ever year-to-date sales of 9,580 cars, best-ever quarterly sales of 3,713 cars, and best-ever monthly sales (in September) of 1,439 cars. This gives us confidence that 2023 will be our best year in car sales, hopefully surpassing the peak of 11,981 cars we sold in 2022.”
He added that the year will also hopefully be the best for two-wheeler sales, surpassing the 7,282 two-wheelers it sold in CY22.
This confidence stems from the fact that the semiconductor shortage is behind the industry, and the German carmaker has been able to reduce pending orders of its cars from about 5,500 units in Q1CY23 to about 3,000 right now. But he is cautious. “Recently, a tropical storm on the US East Coast hit Charleston port, impacting our global supply chain,” Pawah said.
But in two-wheelers there isn’t much of a supply chain challenge, because its three highest selling models (G 310 GS, G 310 R and G 310 RR) are made by TVS Motor at its Hosur plant in Tamil Nadu, under the TVS-BMW tie-up that happened in 2013 and started selling bikes in 2017. These three models had an 88% share in BMW Motorrad sales during January-September 2023.
However, the biggest numbers are coming from the carmaker’s electric vehicle sales, where it has a 48% share in the luxury market. “We have sold over 1,000 EVs in India since we launched our first EV a little over a year ago, and in CY23 we expect to sell 1,000 EVs,” Pawah said.
“We have 48% market share in luxury EVs, grew 5x in January-September 2023, and have the biggest model range with five EVs – the iX1, i7, iX, i4 and MINI SE.”
