BMW reaches 2 million electric vehicles, doubling output in just two years

Wednesday 06 May 2026 - 08:40

By: Dakir Madiha

BMW reaches 2 million electric vehicles, doubling output in just two years

BMW Group announced Tuesday that it had produced its two millionth fully electric vehicle, a Tanzanite Blue BMW i5 M60 xDrive sedan assembled at its Dingolfing plant in Germany and destined for a customer in Spain. The milestone marks a dramatic acceleration in the company's electrification trajectory and underscores how quickly its manufacturing capacity has scaled.

The pace of that acceleration is striking. It took BMW nearly 11 years from the launch of the first i3 at its Leipzig plant in 2013 to reach one million fully electric vehicles. The second million was achieved in just two years. The Dingolfing facility, which began producing fully electric cars in 2021 with the BMW iX, now offers the widest range of battery electric models across the group's production network, including the iX, the i5 sedan and touring, and the i7. More than 320,000 electric vehicles have rolled off its lines in Lower Bavaria since 2021, representing roughly one in six electric vehicles produced by the BMW Group. By 2025, more than one in four vehicles built at Dingolfing was fully electric.

Global delivery figures, however, reveal an uneven picture. BMW delivered 442,072 electric vehicles worldwide in 2025, a modest year-on-year increase that reflects diverging demand across regions. In Europe, sales of fully electric cars rose 28 percent, with one in five vehicles sold in the European Union now battery-powered. The picture was less favorable elsewhere. In the United States, BMW's battery electric vehicle sales fell 16.7 percent year-on-year to 42,484 units, including a 45.5 percent collapse in the fourth quarter following the elimination of the federal electric vehicle tax credit. China also weighed on performance, with sales declining by double digits. Plug-in hybrid sales, by contrast, surged more than 30 percent in the United States, indicating where a portion of buyers redirected their spending.

BMW's production strategy centers on manufacturing flexibility, with vehicles using different powertrains assembled on the same lines across its German plants. The company maintains its target of making electric vehicles account for more than 50 percent of total annual sales by 2030. New models are arriving to support that ambition: the iX3, the first vehicle built on BMW's Neue Klasse platform, is already in showrooms, while the electric i3 Series 3 is making its debut this spring and an electric X5 is to follow. Rolls-Royce is also developing its own electric SUV. Competition is intensifying on all fronts, with Volkswagen having recently announced that it too crossed the two million electric vehicles sold threshold, just ten months after reaching its first million.