BMW announced Tuesday that it has increased production of its i3 electric city car by 43 percent to meet increasing demand.
Harald Krueger, production chief for BMW, said the automaker raised daily output from 70 vehicles to 100, according to Bloomberg.
The vehicle is assembled in Leipzig, Germany.
Krueger said the decision came as a result of demand for the i3 outgrowing supply, Transport Evolved reported.
The vehicle is the first of BMW's all-electric brand and the first luxury subcompact to go into the marketplace. Since the beginning of the year, the automaker has already built over 5,000 i3s, Bloomberg reported.
BMW started releasing the model last November, and will introduce the i8 hybrid sports car to the market in June. A carbon fiber chassis, which is designed to bring weight down and improve fuel efficiency, is featured in both vehicles. The company announced in February that it is building another production hall at a plant jointly run with SGL Carbon SE (SGL) to increase assembly for the chassis.
The high demand for the i3 may have also been caused by the automaker's recent pre-launch events in Asia and Australia, where potential buyers had the chance to drive the i3 all-electric and i3 BEVx range extended models before their official release in the market, Transport Evolved reported.
More production is expected to increase BMW's first-ear i3 production to more than 20,000 cars, which is about twice the amount that the automaker initially planned.
"Following the market introduction in Europe, we're now rolling out the i3 in the U.S.," Krueger said. "The U.S. will be the largest market for the i3."
BMW was looking to increase production in October for the vehicle because of early demand, according to Friedrich Eichiner, chief financial officer for BMW. The automaker said it had 11,000 orders for the vehicle at the time and looked to sell over 10,000 in 2014, Bloomberg reported.
"BMW invested a lot of money" on their electric-car push and using carbon fiber, said Stefan Bratzel, director of the Center of Automotive Management at the University of Applied Sciences in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany. "It was a bold move, but it also bears some risk as production is complex. They need to make this work."
