BMW Mocks Tesla, Elon Musk With 100 Tweets About Cybertruck Pickup Orders

In an obvious jab at Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s tweets on the pre-order surge of Tesla Cybertruck, the German carmaker BMW group went on a twitter spree announcing its sale of 500,000 electric vehicles.

The twitter offensive of BMW lasted two days-- Wednesday and Thursday and involved more than 100 tweets.

According to the report by Business Insider, BMW's Twitter offensive started with the figure 499,820 and went on until 500,000.

After reaching 500,000, the automaker revealed that it sold half a million electrified vehicles including fully electric vehicles and hybrids.

“A big thanks to everyone who joined our little Twitter count-up for the past two days. Most of you guessed right: The BMW Group has already delivered 500,000 electrified cars worldwide,” said the automaker’s tweet on Thursday and added. “The future is now”

BMW's tweets resembled tweets of Musk that projected the number of bookings Tesla received for Cybertruck. Tesla and BMW did not offer any direct comments on the twitter spree.

Among the electric vehicles of BMW include the i3 electric sedan and the i8 Coupe and i8 Roadster plug-in hybrid sports cars.

The automaker is on record that it wanted to add 25 electrified vehicles by 2023, including all-electric models such as the iX3 SUV and the iNEXT SUV.

Soon after the unveiling of Cybertruck in the third week of November, Musk was on a twitter overdrive with a series of messages. Some had had mere numbers such as “200k,” followed by “250k” after the gap of a few days.

The tweets gave good marketing back up as discussion raged on what Musk is implying by the word “orders,” per CNBC report.

The BMW currently offers 12 electrified vehicles and wanted half of the vehicles sold in Europe to be electric vehicles by 2030.

Meanwhile, the latest news noted that BMW Group’s announcement of selling 500,000 electrified cars also coincided with the exit of car-sharing service Share Now from the North American market and closing operations in London and Brussels. Share Now is a joint venture of BMW and Daimler.

Legacy automakers crowding the electric market

Although Tesla is a pioneer in electric vehicles, most legacy automakers have joined the crowd and trying to stamp their imprint in terms of innovative range, design, and pricing.

Germany’s Volkswagen Group said in November that it started production of its ID.3 electric car and will launch “almost 70 new electric models” by 2028.

Volkswagen’s short term goals include unveiling 34 vehicle models in 2020 in which eight will be electric or hybrid vehicles. The fleet will also have 12 SUVs, per Fox News report.

According to chief operating officer Ralf Brandstatter, the brand is looking to invest 19 billion euros ($13.3 billion) in “future technologies” through 2024 and 11 billion euros ($12.2 billion) will be exclusively for electric vehicles.