BMW slightly increased sales of its core brand in the second quarter thanks to strong growth in electric cars.

The Munich-based car manufacturer sold 565,553 BMW cars from April to June, a good two percent more than in the same period last year, as the company announced on Wednesday. Of these, almost 108,000 were battery-electric vehicles, an increase of 22.2 percent on the previous year. The sales figures were impacted by the slump of the Mini brand, of which BMW sold just under 52,000 units, 27.6 percent less than a year ago.

At 1.2 million vehicles, BMW Group sales in the first half of the year were just below the previous year's level. The core brand achieved 2.3 percent growth to almost 1.1 million vehicles.

(Report by Ilona Wissenbach, edited by Sabine Wollrab. If you have any queries, please contact the editorial team at frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com)