The electric vehicles market is on the rise with more and more customers being interested in buying an electric car. And the sales numbers are showing it. While it does seem like the uptake is building up extremely slowly, sales are definitely increasing and BMW will have to adapt at some point. The German company has repeatedly said they plan to offer customers a wide choice to pick from and that they will use their flexible architecture to the max, to make sure they deliver what the customers want.
This week, that was highlighted once again by an official. Speaking to the press at a conference, BMW Australia boss, Vikram Pawah said: “We are absolutely committed to the power of choice now and well into the future, allowing customers to choose either a combustion engine, plug-in hybrid, or fully electric vehicle. We are not choosing one technology over the other because we agree the customer would like all the powertrain options available. We are going to offer customers the power of choice to choose the powertrain that they want. We are technology based mobility providers.”
That statement falls in line with what the CEO of the company has been repeating time after time in the last few years. BMW will use its flexible architectures to provide customers with the perfect choice, tailored to their needs.
Furthermore, this allows BMW to save money that would otherwise be spent on developing a bespoke platform for electric vehicles alone. Over the next three years BMW pledged to launch 25 electrified cars, 12 of them being purely electric models.
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This approach also allows BMW to be flexible and build three different types of cars on the same assembly lines. Therefore, no matter what kind of mix the customers prefer, they can adapt on the fly and deliver. This, combined with the research and development done in their centers focused on battery tech and electric motors should allow the Germans to keep a competitive edge in the segment.
BMW sees internal combustion engines still around in 30 years
Force it? don’t make me laugh … they don’t have anything to even make me think of them when researching for an EV, let alone to buy it, which by the way, I won’t anyways, i.e. current EV technology, specially battery recharging, does not justify the buy; you may lease an EV but never buy it … once you’re able to recharge the battery as fast as filling it up a gas guzzler, then EV’s will take off, otherwise they are just expensive toys … I really don’t care about range cuz all performance cars mileage per gallon suck anyway, the difference is that I can stop by a gas station and refill in less than 10 minutes, something impossible with EV’s for the next 5+ years or more …
If the range is ~400-500km, then a 20-30 minute stop will not be a problem as people need to grab a snack, move the stiff legs and visit a bathroom anyway after that much driving. Might be a bit tighter on Autobahn where at high speed the range is likely to drop to 300 km and it may only take 2 hours to reach that. Still, with the added stress of high speed driving it is good to stop then too.
Right? I’ll never understand the “it takes too long” argument when people stop to eat or stretch or buy things anyway. It’s not like people are doing cannonball runs for every longer drive they go on.
People who want to bash EVs will boast that they can “stop at a gas station and refill in less than 10 minutes”…then spend another 30+ minutes at a restaurant while their car does nothing. I’d so much rather have a long range EV with a coffee shop or restaurant at a charging station, and kill two birds with one stone, than stop at both a restaurant and a gas station to brag about how quickly I can do the latter.
“Fuck, I forgot to plug in my car for charging last night. I’ll just quickly recharg… Oh, wait…”
I’ve had an i3 for over two years now. You really don’t forget to plug it in, it become routine.
Exactly. Had 3 i3s so far. Never happened.
I don’t know where you live, but I do trips southnorth of Germany around 850km in <6 hrs with my 330d. Usually one 5min stop for fueling and WC, that’s it. I don’t need to stretch legs or eat overpriced, bad fuel station food.
With an EV that is impossible to reach, I’ll need to recharge at least 2 times. Which makes the whole trip to 8hr+ or probably even more.
Might not be a use case for everyone, but for me it is. So I’ll always need my diesel.
No need to stop if you’re filling up at home, overnight.
We know 4 (Mini EV, iX3, i4, iNext) of the 12 EVs that are supposed to launch by 2023. Maybe it is about time to start talking about the line-up of EVs for 2022? There should be 3-4 EV launching in that year and I am very excited to find out more about them.
We already did.
You will get the i7, a 5 Series electric, X1, 3 Series Long (China).
What? BMW won’t force me to buy an i3 or mini EV. BMW dropped the ball on EVs after having a 10 year lead over other ICE manufacturers. The i3 goes for $44k and the $30k Mini EV has 110 miles range. Nuff said.
Explains why they sell more electric than any European & how their EV market share>ICE. How do you drop the ball on a segment that is single digit % of global total?
A typical cnet… they stopped at two models and didn’t push new models. I3 & 8 are going out of production and there is nothing following apart from yet another set of announcements. BEVs have become the vaporware of the automotive industry.
“I3 & 8 are going out of production and there is nothing following apart from yet another set of announcements.”
You know fully well from visiting this site that the iX3, the i4 (which will be on show in Geneva next month) and the iNext / iX are coming so your statement above is nonsense.
They are announcements or has your dealer some in stock already?
i3/s and i8/s/roadster and C evolution was advertisement of what they can do with electric drivetrain + beta testing, they even accelerated their electric car plans by 2 years to 2023 so they see potential…its near, its unavoidable, do you think we still have fossil fuel cars in 2452? check 2nd table Cities and territories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_fossil_fuel_vehicles
You don’t spend billions to build new factories and a completely new drivetrain to produce “advertisements”. The most likely explanation is very simple. BMW adopted too early, wanted the lead came up with the quirky i3 and the not even M3 challenging i8 and then dropped the ball. Internal resistance, lacking customer interest, negative margins on every car. Meanwhile others let the competition do the work to join later and they all prolongue the wait with announcements. BMW is back in the prototype announcement stage.
The problem for BMW is that they lease a lot of cars for 3 years and then have to sell the approved used car. They won’t have any flexibility on the cars coming off lease and if the market changes to prefer electrics they are going to be stuck with a lot of 3 year old ICE cars.
Vehicles are stolen from my city of 7 million & shipped to 3rd world nations (bicycles, also), there will ALWAYS be a market for ICE, esp. w./BEV premium $.
As the future market is China, where leasing basically not exist, it’s not such a big (financial) issue. China will save the business so bad…But sure, something they need to take care of.
I’m just glad we have the PHEV X3s and X5s to bridge us to more advanced technology (autonomy) and full AWD with gen 5 power systems.
Electrification and autonomy are independent innovations. There could be a fully autonomous ICE, just as there are EVs with minimal autonomy.
BMW doesn’t force us. Politicians do with regulations.
Current topics from germany:
– general speed limit
– high taxation on ice vehicles
– tax payers money dropped on ev buyers
– gov. financed charging infrastructure
– ridiculous emissions laws (ad blue Diesel, gas opf)
– car free cities, reduced parking spaces, ev exclusive parking etc.
Our EU traitors currently fiddle with “green” deals and the only thing i see how they establish yet another bureaucratic monstrosity re-distributing money and creating more jobs in their own game. You just can’t make this up how many people work for the gov. or close organizations doing bullshit jobs.
Perhaps you should take your rant to the politicians?
I am a voluntary politician for our muncipal government. This is already an unthankful stressing job. The higher you go up into federal or EU politics it gets more terribly disconnected between decision making and people. The recent most important position EU comission has Ursula von der Leyen. Not a single person voted for her, she got elected by elites that are already distant from their people with an everyone gets everything new green deal b.s. promises. They throw around billions and meanwhile we struggle to keep even most essential infrastructure running.