by The BMW 5 Series, BMW X3, and Mini Countryman are among the 13 new vehicles that BMW Group India plans to introduce in 2024.As the volume increases, BMW Group India, which has been leading the luxury electric car market in the nation for the last two years, will localise its electric vehicle (EV) portfolio, a senior company official said.
The company sold 1,474 electric vehicles in 2023, an increase of 325% year over year (y-o-y) over the approximately 347 units delivered in 2022. Five completely built up (CBU) models—the BMW iX1, BMW i4, BMW iX, BMW i7, and Mini 3-Door Cooper SE—are part of its electric lineup.With 694 units sold, the BMW iX was the best-selling luxury electric vehicle in India in 2023, but the Mini 3-Door Cooper SE was the best-selling luxury electric hatchback with 239 units sold.Over 10% of the company’s highest-ever yearly car sales in 2023—14,172 units—were electric vehicles (EVs; 13,303 units for BMW and 869 units for Mini).
“At the moment, EVs are a pretty new business for us,” stated Vikram Pawah, President of BMW Group India, in an interview with India Today. The first complete year that EVs were sold in the nation was 2023. We’ve managed to get 10% of our sales from electric vehicles. Thus, as with any other product, we now anticipate that as the volume increases, we will begin considering when to localise. Thus, it is only a question of time.””But as far as our overall localisation strategy is concerned, 90% of the products that we sell in India are locally produced, and have a localisation content of 50%,” he stated.
According to Pawah, the market for luxury electric vehicles in India is expected to expand in the upcoming years. “It will undoubtedly expand. It’s important to comprehend the mindset of the consumer when discussing the premium space. These clients are more technologically savvy and prefer to use the newest products. In my opinion, the premium space has a higher level of EV penetration than the mass market,” he said.As evidenced by BMW’s performance in 2023, sales in the luxury segment are more evenly distributed than in the mass segment, where sport utility vehicles (SUVs) are dominating and sedans are steadily declining.
The SUV category made up 54% of the company’s volume, whereas the sedan category made up 46%. With 2,633 units sold, the X1 was the best-selling SUV, followed by the X7 with 1,513 units. With 2,702 sales, the 3 Series was the best-selling sedan, followed by the 6 Series with 1,453 sales.
We’ve always managed to strike a decent mix between sedans and SUVs. We believe that consumers should have the option to select between an SUV and a sedan at every price range. This provides the option based once more on the customer’s usage requirements. This explains why there is a fairly good mix, with 46% of sedans and 54% of SUVs. That mixture is extremely close.Fifty-four percent of the company’s total volume consisted of petrol models. In 2023, the percentage of diesel models dropped from nearly 65% five years earlier to 36%.
Regarding this decline, Pawah stated: “We have to remember that when it was 65%, the demand for diesel vehicles was driven by fuel policy rather than customer needs because diesel was less expensive than petrol at the time. The demand for diesel began to increase naturally as soon as the fuel subsidy was eliminated. Therefore, the current situation is one of natural demand unaffected by outside forces.”
While the market for luxury cars saw its greatest-ever annual volume in 2023—nearly 41,000 units—beating the previous record of about 40,000 units in 2018, Pawah predicted that it will continue to rise.We lag far behind the rest of the world in the luxury car segment because we still account for only 1.2% of the Indian market. Even the economies of the neighbouring Asian countries have penetration rates ranging from 3 to 8%. China is at 17%. Europe has a 24 percent share. Thus, there’s a lot of space for us to develop.
It will inevitably expand in tandem with the economy and people’s aspirations. He pointed out that the pace of growth is the only topic of discussion.In addition to electric and internal combustion engine (ICE) models, BMW also offers the flagship BMW XM hybrid model.In the future, all technologies will coexist since every customer’s needs will be unique, predicts Pawah. “Depending on your need, even in the future, hydrogen, electric and traditional engines will coexist, until some regulation comes in that stops that,” he stated.
