MUNICH/WOLFSBURG/STUTTGART (dpa-AFX) - Things are going slowly for the German car industry. All three major groups announced sales figures for the first half of the year on Wednesday - none of them are in the black at group level after the first six months. BMW got off relatively lightly with a drop of 0.1 percent to 1.21 million cars and VW with a 0.6 percent decline to 4.35 million. Mercedes-Benz, on the other hand, lost 6 percent to 1.17 million.

At Volkswagen, it is primarily the core brand VW Passenger Cars and Audi that are dragging down the figures. The Ingolstadt subsidiary sold only 833,000 cars in the first half of the year, 8.2 percent fewer than a year ago. The core VW brand, which accounts for more than half of total Group sales, was almost able to maintain its sales in the first half of the year, losing only 0.2 percent to 2.22 million cars. In the months from April to June, however, the tide turned for the worse, with a drop of 5.2 percent during this period. The Skoda and Seat/Cupra subsidiaries, on the other hand, made gains.

Business in China weakens

Business is particularly weak in China, where the VW Group sells a good third of all cars. Just under 1.35 million cars were sold there in the first six months, 7.4 percent less than in the previous year. There was also a dip in sales of electric cars. In the first half of the year, the Group delivered 317,200 e-models worldwide, 4,400 fewer than in the same period in 2023. This was mainly due to weak demand in Europe and the USA, where 15 percent fewer e-cars were delivered in each case.

Audi was able to slightly increase its e-car sales from 75,600 to 76,700 vehicles. However, deliveries of the top model, the Q8 e-tron, fell from 19,500 to 17,900. Due to the weak demand for the Q8 e-tron electric model, the VW subsidiary is now considering discontinuing production of the model in Brussels ahead of schedule. As a result, the entire site with around 3,000 employees is on the brink of collapse.

Nevertheless, the VW Group is optimistic for the rest of the year. "For 2024 as a whole, we continue to expect a slight increase in global deliveries compared to the previous year due to the start-up and ramp-up of numerous important models in the second half of the year," said Hildegard Wortmann, Head of Sales at Audi, who is also responsible for the division within the Group as a whole.

Pure electric cars help at BMW - but no longer as strongly

At BMW, the Mini and Rolls-Royce subsidiaries weighed on the figures. Their sales fell by 18.7 percent to 114,000 cars and by 11.4 percent to 2,819 cars respectively, with Mini's ongoing model changes having a noticeable impact. In contrast, the core BMW brand performed better with 1.1 million cars and growth of 2.3 percent, almost compensating for the subsidiary's declines.

Unlike its arch-rivals in the premium segment, Audi and Mercedes, electric mobility remained a growth driver for the Munich-based company. At Group level, deliveries of purely electric vehicles at BMW increased by around a quarter to 190,600. However, growth in percentage terms has also slowed significantly here: in 2023 as a whole, BMW had still achieved an increase of around three quarters in pure electric vehicles.

Board Member for Sales Jochen Goller assessed the development positively "in a challenging market environment": "In the first six months of the year, we succeeded in achieving double-digit growth with fully electric vehicles and models from the upper premium segment."

Mercedes suffers from falling electric figures

At Mercedes, the Mercedes-Benz Cars passenger car division accounted for just under 960,000 deliveries - also a decline of 6 percent. The vans division reported a drop of 4 percent to 209,000. Electromobility proved to be a brake for the Stuttgart-based company: sales of fully electric vehicles fell by 16 percent to 101,600 at Group level and by 17 percent to 93,400 at Cars. The ramp-up of electric vehicles is slowing down in important markets, the company said.

Model changes and availability bottlenecks affected sales in the first half of the year, Mercedes said. In the top product segment - which includes the S-Class - sales figures fell by 22 percent. This was also due to a subdued market environment in Asia. In the important Chinese market, sales fell by 9 percent./ruc/DP/men