BERLIN -- BMW more than doubled its global sales of battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) year-on-year in the first two months of 2023, due to "disproportionately strong" growth in China, the German carmaker said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, in China, its biggest single market, the BMW Group said it had more than tripled BEV sales year-on-year.

"The relevance of the Chinese market for BMW remains enormous, in particular with regard to electric vehicles," a company spokesperson told Xinhua. In 2023, the carmaker expects China's share of total BEV sales to "continue to rise significantly."

Last year, one in three cars sold by BMW went to China. The country's share of sales was more than twice as high as that of the United States, the company's second-largest single market.

The carmaker fully consolidated its joint Chinese venture BMW Brilliance Automobile (BBA) in 2022, pushing up group earnings before tax to a record 23.5 billion euros ($24.9 billion) -- up 46.4 percent year-on-year.

With this acquisition, BMW said it is looking to strengthen its long-term collaboration with Brilliance China Automotive Holdings Ltd expand production capacity in Shenyang, and "systematically increase" local productions.

After BMW launched a customized longer all-electric 3 Series model exclusively to the Chinese market last year, a longer all-electric version of the BMW iX1 is set to hit China in 2023.

BMW expects the share of all-electric vehicles in its total global sales to rise from 9 percent last year to 15 percent in 2023. "Demand remains strong," said Oliver Zipse, CEO of BMW AG, adding: "With this momentum, more than half the vehicles we sell worldwide will be all-electric before 2030."