The gloom surrounding the global car industry deepened yesterday when General Motors (GM) reported a $15.5 billion (£7.85 billion) quarterly loss, BMW issued its first profits warning in years and Nissan's earnings fell short of expectations.

The three large carmakers are the latest in the industry to report that they are paying a heavy price for stalling sales and rising raw material costs, especially in the United States.

GM suffered the third-largest quarterly loss in its history as its sales in North America plunged 20 per cent. For the same period last year the carmaker made a profit of $891 million.

Its losses include several charges, including $3.3 billion for severance payments to 19,000 hourly paid workers, $2.8 billion in liabilities for Delphi, its former components division, and $1.3 billion in write-offs at GMAC, its partly owned finance operation. GMAC has been hit with big losses as it has been forced to sell end-of-lease trucks and sports utility vehicles (SUVs) at knockdown prices.

Last month GM announced a sweeping restructuring plan to deal with mounting problems in America, where car sales have slumped and motorists are shunning gas-guzzling SUVs.

BMW, the premium carmaker that traditionally has been fairly resilient to slowdowns, issued a rare profits warning. Its announcement that this year's profits would not match last year's came after a similar move by Daimler, its German rival, last week.

Norbert Reithofer, BMW's chief executive, cast a shadow over the prospects for next year as the carmaker doubled its risk provisions to €695 million (£548 million). “We assume 2009 will be another difficult year full of challenges,” he said.

BMW issued the warning about its full-year profits after revealing that earnings before interest and tax had fallen 58 per cent to €425 million in the second quarter.

Production is likely to be cut by up to 25,000 vehicles and prices will rise. BMW has been hurt badly in the US, its biggest market.

Nissan suffered damage from the slowing American market, rising manufacturing costs and a renewed vogue for scooters.

Bludgeoned by a much stronger yen and a higher bill for materials, profits in the first quarter of its financial year fell by 43 per cent.

Net income between the start of April and the end of June was 52.8 billion yen (£25 million), compared with the Y92 billion in the same period last year.

Carlos Ghosn, the chief executive of Nissan, said that the company remained resilient and he left full-year profits and sales forecasts unchanged.

However, some investors believe that the group will continue to feel the pain of rising steel and aluminium prices. Investors had expected Nissan to deliver better figures and some said that they feared the group would have to downgrade its forecasts in the next few months.

The company also set aside hefty provisions of Y42 billion to cover what it called residual value risk on leased vehicles in the US and Canada.

Nissan's fortunes contrast with Japanese makers of two-wheeled transport.

Yamaha is among a number of manufacturers that has benefited from brisk sales of scooters and mopeds in both the US and developing countries, where fuel subsidies have been scrapped.

Unlike Honda, its rival, where quarterly profits rose as sales of small, fuel-efficient cars increased, Nissan's commercial vehicle line-up has proved less popular with increasingly cash-strapped American drivers.

Among its product lines hit hardest was the Titan pick-up, sales of which fell by 20 per cent. Those difficulties last month forced the company to announce 1,200 job cuts in the US.

Mounting problems in the car industry are starting to send tremors through the raw materials markets.

The price of platinum, which is used in catalytic converters, fell $94 to $1,664 as investors feared further contraction across the automotive sector.

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