BMW chief executive Oliver Zipse doesn’t believe Tesla competes in the same premium segment of the market as the German carmaker.
Zipse recently had a conference call with German publication Handelsblatt and was asked to give his opinion on Tesla. He hasn’t been afraid to criticize Tesla models in the past and during the interview, implied that BMW places a great focus on customer satisfaction than the EV leader.
“Tesla isn’t quite part of the premium segment,” he said, reports Bloomberg. “They are growing very strongly via price reductions. We would not do that since you have got to last the distance. Where we differ is our standard on quality and reliability. We have different aspirations on customer satisfaction.”
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While BMW may not consider Tesla a competitor in the premium segment, recent figures reveal that in the first nine months of the year, it had overtaken Mercedes-Benz for sales in the U.S., establishing itself as the third best-selling ‘luxury’ vehicle brand. This year in the States Tesla posted 230,885 registrations, not far away from the 245,864 recorded by BMW.
Then there’s the obvious point that Tesla remains far ahead of BMW in the world of electric vehicles, although the German car manufacturer is working to close the gap. In addition to introducing all-electric models like the i4 and iX, BMW is aiming to have delivered at least 2 million fully-electric vehicles to customers by the end of 2025 and believes that EVs will account for roughly 50 per cent of its global sales by 2030.
