BMW is on course to be the most popular make of car in Belgium for 2024, for the fourth year running, BMW-Belux CEO Alexander Wehr said at a press conference on Wednesday.
In total, around 54,000 new cars from the German brand will have been delivered to customers in Belgium in 2024. For Belux (Belgium and Luxembourg combined) the figure will be around 60,000 deliveries, an all-time record for BMW.
With 48,528 new car registrations recorded by the end of November, BMW is ahead of Volkswagen (39,937) and Audi (31,394), according to the latest data available from FEBIAC, the Belgian automobile and cycle federation. This gives BMW a market share of 11.4% over the first 11 months of the year, compared with 10.4% at the same time a year ago.
For 2025, BMW aims to maintain its position, according to its CEO, who does not rule out further growth in its market share.
Nowhere in the world does BMW sell more new cars per million inhabitants than in Belgium and Luxembourg. Its Belux figure was 4,389 sales per million inhabitants in the first 11 months of this year, way above Germany (2,439) and Switzerland (2,074).
For the first time, more than half of BMW's new orders in Belux are for fully electric vehicles. "In September, at the end of the third quarter, we were at 62%," said Wehr.
"In terms of actual registrations, we were at 38% fully electric BMWs at that time, in a Belux market where 27% of all registrations were battery electric cars and in a European market where 15% of registrations corresponded to battery electric cars," he added.
Thanks to the strong electrification of the range and the increase in sales of electric cars, the CO2 emissions of a BMW registered in Belgium have almost been halved in two years. Where the average German car registered in Belgium still showed CO2 emissions of 84 grammes/kilometre in 2022, these have fallen to 46 grammes/kilometre in 2024, according to the manufacturer.
"In Belgium and Luxembourg, we can see very clearly that the professional market is the driving force behind electrification," the BMW-Belux boss added.
