BMW wants to have sold half a million electric cars by the end of 2019

German carmaker BMW wants the number of fully electric and hybrid models sold to be 500,000 by the end of 2019. If that number is reached, that would be more than double.

The director of BMW, Harald Krüger, did not say to the German magazine WirtschaftsWoche what the desired ratio should be for him between the sold hybrid models and fully electric cars. In 2017, the German automaker sold 100,000 electric cars and so far, more than 200,000 have been sold in total. These numbers concern fully electric cars and plug-in hybrid models.

Krüger expects deliveries of electric vehicles to increase by roughly 50 percent in 2018. Despite the strong growth in sales of electric cars, the director says that BMW cannot do without an internal combustion engine in the near future, because according to him we are still in a transition phase. BMW wants to have twelve fully electrically powered models by 2025 that can reach a minimum of 700 km on a single charge.

Many car manufacturers plan to significantly increase the share of electric cars sold. Toyota recently announced that it will release more than ten electric car models in the first years after 2020. The Japanese manufacturer wants to have sold more than 5.5 million cars with an electric motor by 2030 and that every Toyota or Lexus car will be available by 2025. is as an electric model or at least as a plug-in hybrid model. The Volkswagen Group wants to make an electric model of every existing car from 2030. Mercedes-Benz will do this from 2022.

Other manufacturers have more ambitious plans for selling electric cars. For example, the Swedish manufacturer Volvo previously indicated that from 2019 only cars with an electric motor will be made. Jaguar Land Rover will do the same as Volvo from 2020 onwards. Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi previously announced in September that they would release twelve fully electric models until 2022.