Mercedes-Benz’s luxury sales of luxury passenger cars fell five percent last year to 2.05 million.
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According to Reuters, the Mercedes-Benz brand thus lost its leading position on the luxury car market for the first time in five years. It was overtaken by rival German brand BMW, which announced this week that its global sales last year exceeded 2.2 million vehicles for the first time.
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In Europe, Mercedes-Benz sales fell about 11 percent to 696,000 last year. In China, it fell by two percent to 759,000 cars, while in the United States it rose by 0.4 percent to 276,000.
In the fourth quarter alone, global Mercedes-Benz car sales fell by almost a quarter year-on-year to around 464,000. In his report, Daimler pointed to persistent chip shortages. “The situation regarding semiconductor supplies remains uncertain and their shortage is expected to affect production and sales in the coming quarters,” the carmaker said.
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BMW will publish more detailed data on the development of last year’s sales next week. Pieter Nota, a member of the Board of Directors responsible for sales, announced last year that it exceeded 2.2 million cars sold.
“The BMW brand is thus number one on the global luxury car market, by a significant margin,” he said. He also predicted that BMW would continue to grow this year.
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