BMW USA announced this week that sales in 2022 amounted to 332,388 units or 1.3% less than the year before. The drop is largely caused by weaker demand for non-SUVs, which suffered a decline of 20.7%, while deliveries of light trucks (X3 and larger) went up on average by 15.7% compared to January-December 2021. A full breakdown per model is now available, showing what worked and what didn’t last year.
Discontinued in the United States at the beginning of 2022, the i3 still managed to generate nine sales. It’s a far cry from 2021 when BMW USA managed to ship 1,476 units. The compact hatchback remained on sale outside of the United States for a while as production in Leipzig, Germany didn’t end until late June. It had a nine-year run during which about 250,000 units were assembled. The “i3” name lives on in China for an electric long-wheelbase 3 Series Sedan.
Interestingly, the i8 still shows up in the sales chart despite the fact production ended way back in June 2020. The plug-in hybrid sports car found nine new homes in 2022, compared to the year before when 18 vehicles were sold. It’s unclear how many were coupes and convertibles, but it looks as though dealers still had them in stock a long time after BMW assembled the cars at the same Leipzig plant in Germany as the i3.
As the sales chart above shows, demand decreased for all passenger cars except for the 4 Series, which saw a huge jump of 61.1%. The small front-wheel-drive X1 and X2 crossovers are listed together with the passenger cars while the X3 and bigger SUVs are all “light trucks.” The X5 was extremely popular, with sales increasing by 35.6% to 82,372 units, ahead of 2023 when the luxury SUV will receive a facelift that will bring the iDrive 8 and evolutionary design tweaks.
The mechanically related but sleeker X6 also had a good year prior to this year’s LCI, with 13,676 units delivered or 42.6% more than in 2021. As for the three-row X7, BMW’s fullsize SUV enjoyed an increase of 33.2% to 30,706 units in 2022. The purely electric iX racked up 5,665 units in its first year in the United States.
The sales chart for 2023 will include a new member…
