According to the new data, Tesla has overtaken BMW in the United States as the Top Luxury Vehicle maker in 2022. The race was between an electric vehicle maker and the other which has been transforming to electrify. Speculations were already high that Tesla ended 2022 as the country’s number one luxury car maker. The information is revealed from the new data from Experian.
Experian data shows that Tesla saw 484,351 new vehicle registrations during the year, compared to 327,929 for BMW. With its 2022 results, Tesla effectively saw a 41% increase over 2021, while BMW saw a 5.3% decline in the same period. Fellow luxury car maker Mercedes-Benz ended the year as the country’s number three luxury automaker with 269,511 registrations. Mercedes-Benz’s 2022 registrations were almost the same as its 2021 figure.
As noted in an Automotive News report, the total new vehicle registrations among 15 luxury brands in the United States saw a 2.5% drop last year to 2.18 million units. Tesla’s results are quite impressive. The EV maker is competing not only with veteran luxury car makers with far more experience in the industry; it is also competing with rivals that produce internal combustion cars. In a way, Tesla won the luxury market in the United States while selling only one type of vehicle, but one that consumers are heavily demanding now.
It should be noted that Tesla lies far ahead of its rivals in the electric vehicle sector. Tesla’s 484,351 new vehicle registrations tracked by Experian are all-electric vehicles. In comparison, BMW only posted 14,159 new EV registrations last year. Mercedes-Benz posted only 11,444, as per Experian data.
Premium automaker
Tesla’s all-electric cars do not really follow the conventions of traditional luxury vehicles, the company is nonetheless considered a premium automaker due to its vehicles’ prices, as well as their robust performance and technology-focused features. Oliver Zipse, the chairman of BMW AG, seems to acknowledge that electric vehicles are inevitable. However, he is also looking beyond the age of EVs. And in a recent set of comments, Zipse revealed that he believes hydrogen cars will be the “hippest thing to drive” after the electric vehicle age.
“After the electric car, which has been going on for about ten years and scaling up rapidly, the next trend will be hydrogen. When it’s more scalable, hydrogen will be the hippest thing to drive,” Zipse said. Despite the niche nature of hydrogen vehicles today and the difficulties associated with the buildout of a hydrogen infrastructure, BMW has been one of the automakers that have opted to experiment with the technology. In 2005, 100 “Hydrogen 7” cars powered by the fuel’s V12 engines were produced by BMW. And in 2021, the company debuted the iX5 Hydrogen fuel cell concept car at the International Motor Show in Germany.
