Skip to main content

Morning Overview

More than a quarter of the BMW, Mini and Rolls-Royce cars sold in the third quarter had a plug

BMW Group delivered 150,795 electrified vehicles in the third quarter, which is more than a quarter of the 551,072 cars it handed over under the BMW, Mini and Rolls-Royce brands. Fully electric models made up 110,257 of them, about 20 percent of the total. Both shares describe the whole group, because the company does not split plug-in volume out by brand.

Help yourself and the planet: The Cool Down makes it easy to help yourself while helping the planet, with smart, simple changes to save more and waste less in your everyday life.

Get The Cool Down →

We may earn a commission if you sign up.

The brand totals show where the volume sits. BMW itself delivered 479,291 cars, down 6.8 percent, a figure that includes 48,915 cars from BMW M. Mini delivered 70,712, down 2.4 percent, and Rolls-Royce delivered 1,069, down 18 percent. Those three lines sum to the group’s 6.3 percent decline from a year earlier, so the plug-in share rose in a quarter when overall deliveries fell.

Battery-electric and plug-in hybrid volume in the quarter

BMW Group’s own newsroom release puts electrified deliveries, meaning battery-electric plus plug-in hybrid, at 150,795, a dip of 0.3 percent. Battery-electric deliveries climbed 7.2 percent to 110,257. Subtracting one from the other leaves roughly 40,500 plug-in hybrids, an inference from the published totals rather than a number BMW stated, and the company notes that all of the figures are provisional until the BMW Group Report 2026 appears. Jochen Goller, the board member for customers, brands and sales, said the group held its own in Europe and the United States despite difficult market conditions, and he credited the iX3 with providing positive impetus for growth.

InsideEVs supplied the 27.4 percent plug-in share and the 20 percent battery-electric share, and it also tracked the nine-month picture. From January through September, battery-electric vehicles were 18.4 percent of deliveries, up from 18 percent a year earlier, and battery-electric plus plug-in hybrid reached 26.1 percent. The volumes behind those shares slipped: 314,552 battery-electric cars, down 2.7 percent, and 131,653 plug-in hybrids, down 10.3 percent, for a 5.1 percent drop in electrified volume. Battery-electric sales fell more slowly than the group’s 4.9 percent overall decline, which lifted their share, while plug-in hybrids fell faster.

Europe, the United States and China behind the plug-in share

Europe carried the quarter. BMW Group delivered 81,941 fully electric vehicles there, up 37.5 percent, which was 34.7 percent of its European deliveries, and adding plug-in hybrids lifts the electrified share to 46.9 percent, according to electrive’s reading of the release. Germany’s battery-electric deliveries rose 38.5 percent.

The model behind the momentum is the iX3. Just-auto reported that the new BMW iX3 has taken more than 100,000 orders in Europe in its first year, and that the China-specification version is due to launch there in November. Goller’s remark about positive impetus points at that car. Rival groups had a tougher quarter on the same Chinese weakness: Mercedes-Benz Cars fell 8 percent to 407,200 vehicles, and Volkswagen Group fell 14.3 percent. BMW’s decline of 6.3 percent sits between the two.

The U.S. share is far lower: InsideEVs lists 4.7 percent fully electric and 11.4 percent with plug-in hybrids included, even as total U.S. deliveries rose 2.5 percent to 106,741, according to just-auto.

China pulls the other way. Group deliveries there fell 24.8 percent to 114,355, and BMW’s fully electric share in the country was 6.5 percent. Asia-Pacific outside China, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa combined reached 18 percent. Europe’s 235,628 deliveries, up 2.7 percent, still outsold China by about two to one, so the group-wide plug-in share leans on the region where electric uptake is highest.

Regional totals frame those percentages. Europe received 235,628 cars, up 2.7 percent, with Germany contributing 74,697, up 2.1 percent. The Americas took 129,190, up 2.6 percent, of which the United States was 106,741. China took 114,355, down 24.8 percent. A group that sells roughly twice as many cars in Europe as in China, and that sees 34.7 percent of European buyers choose a battery-electric model, can report a quarter share above 27 percent even while a larger market falls away beneath it.

Brand-level gaps in the disclosure

Neither the release nor the coverage assigns a plug-in share to BMW, Mini or Rolls-Royce individually for the quarter. The one brand data point concerns Mini: 37.2 percent of its 220,247 deliveries from January through September, up 6.8 percent, were fully electric, and electrive estimated roughly 82,000 Mini battery-electric cars while noting that BMW does not publish that count. BMW, at 479,291 deliveries in the quarter, and Rolls-Royce, at 1,069, have no published electric split at all.

The arithmetic can be checked from the release. Dividing 150,795 by 551,072 gives 27.4 percent, and dividing 110,257 by 551,072 gives 20.0 percent. Europe’s 81,941 battery-electric deliveries are about 74 percent of the group’s 110,257, which is why a regional story drives a global share. The percentages apply to cars handed to customers, and BMW Motorrad’s 46,605 motorcycles, down 12.5 percent, sit outside the car totals.

Milan Nedeljković, chairman of the board of management, said current developments in the industry call for decisiveness and swift implementation, as relayed by The EV Report. The open question is whether Europe’s 37.5 percent battery-electric gain can keep offsetting a China market where the group’s deliveries fell 24.8 percent, and the provisional quarterly figures will be settled only when the full-year report is published.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

Help yourself and the planet: Get The Cool Down →

We may earn a commission if you sign up.


More from Morning Overview

Morning Overview is reader-supported. Some links in our articles are affiliate links, and we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Full disclosure.