BERLIN, June 25 (Xinhua) -- By 2023, BMW is planning to have 25 electric or hybrid car models on the market, two years earlier than previously planned, the German carmaker announced on Tuesday.
"We are moving up a gear in the transformation towards sustainable mobility," said BMW CEO Harald Krueger.
More than half of the 25 vehicle models would be fully electric, according to the German carmaker. The production of the electric mini is to start in Britain this year, and in 2020, the fully electric BMW iX3 will be coming off the production line in Shenyang, China.
"By 2021, we will have doubled our sales of electrified vehicles compared with 2019," Krueger announced in Munich.
BMW is also planning to introduce a "geofencing" function in all its hybrid vehicles by next year that would automatically recognize "green zones" in cities.
When a hybrid vehicle entered one of these zones, it would automatically switch to purely electric driving mode, according to the carmaker.
Electric and hybrid cars have only accounted for a small part of BMW sales. In 2018, of the almost 2.5 million cars sold by the BMW Group worldwide, only 140,000 had electric or hybrid engines.
