German luxury carmaker Mercedes-Benz reported sales of more than 1.35 million vehicles in the first seven months of CY2018, an increase of 2.3 percent compared to same period last year. Additionally, the company reported July 2018 sales as the best in the history of the brand with global sales of 167,518 passenger cars.

Asia-Pacific drives sales
Mercedes-Benz sold 65,568 units in Europe for the month of July and the coming months it expects to see substantial growth with the recent launch of the new C-class family. The company said that the it sold 542,358 units in the first seven months of CY2018, which was 3.5 percent lesser as compared to the same period in the previous year. In Germany, the company sold a total of 173,721 cars, down by 2.7 percent YoY.

On the other hand the company saw strong demands from the Asian markets, where it reported one of its best July sales with 73,484 units being sold, an increase of 4.6 percent. In the first seven months also, Mercedes-Benz saw a growth of 11.4 percent YoY by registering 566,842 units. China proved to be its biggest market with July sales recording 52,616 units, an increase of 8.3 percent over July 2017. Apart from China, Mercedes-Benz said that it has set a new sales record for the first seven months in South Korea, Japan, India, Malaysia and Thailand.

In the NAFTA region, Mercedes-Benz cars were delivered to 24,884 customers in the month of July, down by 19 percent as compared to July 2017. In the US, it sold 178,882 units (-4.8%) in the first seven months and 20,034 units (-22.7%) in the month of July.

SUVs and S-Class drive sales
With a total of 484,275 SUVs sold in the first seven months of the year, it represented a growth of 7.7 percent YoY. The numbers were primarily driven by the GLC and the GLC coupe models. However, in July 2018, Mercedes-Benz reported a growth of 16.5 percent YoY by selling 4,906 units. The company claimed that the model’s unit sales doubled in Germany and quadrupled in Japan in the previous month. It witnessed more than 48,000 units (26.3% YoY growth) of the S-Class saloon being sold globally.

With the absence of the new C-Class saloon and the Estate in the Asia-Pacific region, their worldwide sales in July were 29,298 units, down by 9.9 percent over July 2017.

Also read: Merc A-Class’ new infotainment system to be integrated with AI and AR

Daimler to restructure into three independent entities

Daimler Group reports net profit of Euro 1,825 million for Q2 CY2018, down 27.35%