BMW achieves record profit

The BMW Group clambered over the €10 billion pre-tax profit mark for the first time last year, on the back of selling a record 2,463,526 cars in 2017.

Its profit margin has remained in an eight-to-10 per cent window for the eighth consecutive year, based on €98,678 million in revenues. It lifted its EBT result by 10.3 per cent to €10,665 million, with the Group ending the year holding €14.5 billion in available cash.

BMW's sales rose 4.2 per cent last year on the back of a 14.7-per cent jump from the 1 Series to 201,968 cars, a 9.6-per cent leap from the SUV X models and a 6.3-per cent rise from the 5 Series, to 291,856 cars. MINI's new Countryman (pictured) scored a whopping 30 per cent growth.

Twenty-four hours after Dieselgate investigators from the Munich public prosecutor's office raided its headquarters, the BMW Group also declared diesel remained a core pillar of its plans to reduce CO2 emissions.

Board of Management Chairman Dr Harald Krüger insisted BMW would launch 20 new or revised cars this year and confirmed it would build two all-electric cars, the iNext and the i4, in Germany.

The manufacturer will build the i4 in its flagship Munich factory from 2021, with an initial production target of 50,000 cars a year (not coincidentally a typical sales year for the Tesla Model S), though it retained the capacity to double that.

While BMW is still ramping up towards its next level of battery-electric vehicles, Dr Krüger confirmed its sales of electrified vehicles (including plug-in hybrids) jumped 65.6 per cent in 2017 to 103,080 cars and SUVs.

It has a 2018 sales target of 140,000 electrified vehicles; with plans for more than half a million electrified cars on the roads by the end of 2019. It plans 12 pure BEVs and another 13 plug-in hybrid models by 2025.

"Our future is definitely electric," Dr Krüger insisted. "With our electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid models, we are already the clear number one in Europe.

"We are using scalable modular kits for electrification. From 2020, we will be able to fit all model series with any type of drivetrain.

"And there is more to come: in 2020, BMW will launch the iX3. 2019 will see the first pure electric Mini.

"You can imagine at some point in the future that it [Mini] will be one day fully electrified as a brand."

BMW will deliver both an upgraded i8 coupe and a new i8 Roadster in May this year, with fourth-generation electric drive technology offering a 40-per cent boost in plug-in range, but its big step is planned to come with the fifth-generation.

"With the fifth generation of eDrive, our vehicles will be able to drive 550 to 700km on electric power, depending on the model," Dr Krüger said.

"We will achieve this in the BMW i4 and the iNext."

None of that is free, though, with the BMW Group board member for finance, Dr Nicolas Peter, admitting it is spending more and more every year on research and development, largely on EVs.

"Research and development expenditure also rose significantly in 2017, to €6.11 billion. This is almost a billion euros higher than the previous year.

"In addition to upfront investments in the development of flexible vehicle architectures, this amount also includes preparations for new models like the X3 and M models."

It had two free financial kicks, too: one expected and the other not. It received €183 million for selling stakes in the HERE digital mapping operation it bought with Audi and Daimler.

It also reduced its total income tax bill from €2.755 billion in 2016 to €1.949 billion in deferred payments from last year, largely due to the US Government's lowering of its corporate tax rate from 30 per cent to 21 per cent.