The battle amongst the premium German car brands doesn’t just happen on the luxury front, it appears. You can have all the Bose sound systems and “air scarf” technology you want, but at the end of the quarter, it’s the sales figures that really talk. After trailing BMW and Audi, the latter who robbed Mercedes of the second spot for luxury cars in the US market, Mercedes-Benz has announced it plans to increase volume to compete with its rivals.

Deliveries for the first half of the year are positive, but Mercedes trails the other big two - BMW and Audi. Mercedes registered a 9.7 percent sales increase to 611,000 vehicles, behind BMW’s 18 percent rise to 690,000 and Audi’s 18 percent rise to 653,000.

Releasing its new range of compact cars, of which the Mercedes B-Class will be one, the company plans to build a new production plant in Hungary and expand operations in both China and the US. For the second half of this year, Mercedes has raised sales targets by just 50,000 vehicles, compared to BMW’s 100,000, and more capacity would have contributed to increased sales. CEO Dieter Zetsche says:

We are striving for the highest profitability of the three and we have reason to believe we will get there. We clearly take on the race for volume. Mid-term, long-term, we are sure that we will be in the hunt for the No. 1 position.

Source | Bloomberg

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