BMW retained its crown as the top-selling German premium car maker last year beating Mercedes-Benz by a minimal advantage. Both brands saw a dip in their shipments but the company from Munich managed to ship 56,792 more vehicles worldwide to claim victory.
BMW sold a total of 2,100,692 units worldwide last year, down 5.1 percent compared to last year. Mercedes, in turn, reported 2,043,900 sales, down 1.0 percent from the previous year. We haven’t gotten any numbers from Audi yet, but the four-ring companies have always been behind BMW and Mercedes and we hope this trend will continue.
BMW seems to be proud of the fact that sales of its hybrid and electric vehicles rose 35.6 percent last year to a total of 372,956 units. Mercedes sold 319,200 plug-in and fully electric cars, an increase of 19 percent. Including sales from Smart, nearly every second car sold by Mercedes-Benz Passenger Cars in 2022 is battery powered (44 percent of overall retail unit sales).
Mini also registered a small decrease of 3.0 percent compared to 2021. Interestingly, the Mini Cooper SE became the marque’s best-selling model in 2022 with a total of 43,744 sales worldwide, representing an increase of more than 25 percent compared to 2021. In total, BMW and Mini delivered 215,755 battery-powered cars, 107.7 percent more than their BEV sales in 2021.
Rolls-Royce is the only BMW Group automotive brand to post an increase in deliveries last year. In fact, 2022 was the best year in the luxury marque’s history with 6,021 cars being handed over to new customers. Mercedes-Maybach, in turn, also had a record-breaking year with 21,600 units delivered to customers, a 37 percent increase compared to 2021.
While BMW and Mercedes sales fell last year, both brands saw positive signs of recovery in the final quarter of the year. Those from Munich enjoyed 10.6 percent growth in Q4 2022, while their counterpart from Stuttgart registered a 17 percent increase compared to the third quarter of this year.
View the full 2022 sales report from BMW and Mercedes for more details.
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