The BMW Group’s operations remained ‘on course’ during the second quarter of 2019, despite a challenging market environment; and in line with forecasts, the group achieved an improvement in both earnings and profitability compared to the first quarter.

Indeed, BMW Group (www.bmwgroup.com) delivered more vehicles to customers in the first half of the year than ever before, gaining ‘segment share’ in key markets.

Harald Krüger, chairman of BMW AG, said: “We are on course to meet our targets for the full year. We are offering customers new products, and we once again succeeded in increasing automobile deliveries to a record level in the first half of the year.

"Even in fast-changing times, we consistently leverage new technologies to successfully master the enormous challenges facing our industry during this current phase of transformation.”

BMW Group is significantly ‘upping the pace’ when it comes to electric mobility: the 25 electric models initially announced for 2025 will now be available in 2023, and over half of them will be fully electric.

The basis for these models is ‘flexible vehicle architectures’ for all-electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids and conventional combustion-engine models, along with a highly flexible production system that enables the company to respond swiftly to fluctuating market requirements.

By 2021, deliveries of electrified vehicles are predicted to double (compared to 2019).

The BMW Group then expects to see a steep growth curve up to 2025, with the volume of electric vehicles delivered forecast to grow on average by more than 30% per year.

In Q2 2019, the BMW Group sold 647,504 BMW, Mini and Rolls-Royce premium vehicles (Q2 2018: 637,878) — a positive development that the company says was largely influenced by the contribution of the BMW Brilliance Automotive joint venture in China — and group revenues rose to 25,715 million euros (Q2 2018: 24,993 million euros).

During the first six months of 2019, the BMW Group delivered a total of 1,252,837 vehicles to customers (compared with 1,242,507 units in 2018), and group revenues rose by 1.1% (to 48,177 million euros).

Meanwhile, BMW Motorrad was able to increase deliveries of its motorcycles and maxi-scooters by 6.8% in the second quarter to 54,582 units, resulting in a corresponding increase in revenues to 727 million euros.

Six-month deliveries rose to 93,188 units. The BMW Group’s workforce comprised 134,914 employees at 30 June 2019.