In the year marked by the semiconductor crisis, BMW grows and becomes the best-selling premium brand in the world. The primacy had been taken by Mercedes-Benz starting from 2016. Pieter Nota, number one of the Elica brand, had anticipated the overtaking on the occasion of the virtual conference linked to the CES in Las Vegas, but the official came only with the dissemination of sales data by the Stuttgart company.
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BMW, which in December announced the sale of the millionth electrified car, that is, plug-in or zero-emission rechargeable, has marketed over 2.2 million vehicles in 2021 against 2.03 million in 2020, when a a decline of 7.1%, much lower than that of the market. The Munich headquarters has not yet released the final figures, but those confirmed by Mercedes-Benz are lower. Despite a significant growth in the volumes of zero-emission models (49,000 units with almost 16,400 global orders for the EQS, which costs no less than 106,000 euros in Italy), the house with the star stopped at 2.03 million. As confirmed by the extraordinary bonus linked to results (up to € 6,000) reserved for German employees, Mercedes-Benz has managed to keep its margins high. Deliveries of the S-Class flagship rose by 40% (87,064) and those of the G-Class reached an all-time high at almost 42,999 units. For the AMG versions, growth of + 17% was recorded to just under 146,000 pieces, while Maybach volumes jumped by more than 50% to 15,730 (China alone absorbs about 900 models per month of this range of luxury).
In the German derby of the segment, Audi, which also had a very promising first half over 981,000 units registered, had reached 1.463 million at the end of November. Thanks to the shortage of microprocessors, it will amount to around one million and 600 vehicles branded globally. Tesla, whose peaks in the stock market have transformed Elon Musk into the richest man in the world, has achieved a new all-time record. With 936,000 units, the growth reported by the American electric car manufacturer is 87%.
In 2021 Volvo Cars, which has already identified Jim Rowan, the former number one of Dyson, the company that produces household appliances and that had launched and then shelved the hypothesis of manufacturing zero-emission cars, the successor of Hakan Samuelsson, has increased sales by 5.6%. The Swedish house owned by the Chinese of Geely (who are also 10% shareholders of Daimler, which controls Mercedes-Benz), has volumes equal to about a third of BMW and Mercedes-Benz. Volvo Cars declared 698,693 vehicles delivered, with a 64% growth in the Recharge range, or 27% of the total. Online sales jumped 316%. The best-selling model is the XC60 215,635 units, about 23,000 more than in 2020. Then there are the XC40 (201,037) and the XC90 (108,231).
