BMW Says It Expects Global Car Market To Recover From Slump

Demand for new cars may have decreased worldwide recently, but the top labor representative from BMW expects global demand to recover and for the German automaker to boost sales significantly over the coming five years.

During an interview with Auto News, BMW’s deputy chairman of the supervisory board Manfred Schoch said the German car manufacturer will boost production by 2 to 3 per cent annually until about 2025.

“We don’t expect the global car market to stagnate but grow by 1 percent to 2 percent,” he revealed. “Based on our model planning at BMW we expect annual growth of 2 percent to 3 percent. So we need two more plants to do this, one in China and one in Europe.”

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If BMW is to increase production by that much, it will build as many as 500,000 additional cars by 2025 over the 2.5 million that it sold last year. China will be a big contributor in this figure with national production there set to grow from 400,000 units annually to 650,000 units annually.

A renewed focus on electric cars will prove important in the brand’s plan to boost its output, as it will soon start manufacturing the upcoming iNext and i4 sedan at two of its German sites.

“Setting up for the i4 in Munich will mean closing down the plant for nearly three months,” Schoch said. “But we have got to ready factories here to make electric cars. Otherwise, we face sitting among ruins like in Detroit. If you look at an average household today, from the fridge to the hair dryer to the razor, all of these things are electric, the only thing that isn’t is the car. Cars will turn electric too, and whoever isn’t on board with this is a goner.”