BMW revamps "i" electric car division to focus on self-drivi

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Up the creek. No paddle.
It's starting to look like our next car, in about three years, won't be a BMW after all.
This, amongst other signals, really doesn't bode well for our EU car industry.

Regards, Steven
 
Stevei3 said:
Up the creek. No paddle.
It's starting to look like our next car, in about three years, won't be a BMW after all.
This, amongst other signals, really doesn't bode well for our EU car industry.

Regards, Steven

I believe there are many BEVs or at least electric-hybrids with real range planned by Audi. I think last I heard they said one new electric car every year starting with 2018 Q8.
 
If true, that Reuters report is a huge retreat for BMW; they are is essence saying: We can't compete with the (mythological) Tesla Model 3 or the (almost real) Chevy Bolt, so forget the Earth, we're shooting for the Moon.
 
This could also be spun as good news for the i3, and that we'll see a revamp with near-autonomous technology around the time the Model 3 comes out before BMW's fully autonomous car in 2021.

I could definitely see myself considering a 2018/2019 i3 with an upgraded body style over a Model 3.
 
We will probably never know if BMW has actually changed their tune or if this was always their plan.

What we do know is that the i3 production line was never going to be able to produce masses of cars in short time. There was always going to be a limit on production. It was never going to out produce the Teslas but it is still way more efficient than any of them.

As it stands, the i3 BEV remains the most efficient production EV to date. None of the Teslas get close, and none of the VW group or other brands get close either. That's without counting in the recyclability of the whole vehicle and the amount of recycled materials in it's production.

Hopefully, the haters that pick on every minor detail of the i3 instead of it's amazing basic premise have not swayed BMW away from their course.

Whatever the future result, BMW has definitely raised the bar for efficiency of production and consumer running of an electric vehicle.
 
epirali said:
I believe there are many BEVs or at least electric-hybrids with real range planned by Audi. I think last I heard they said one new electric car every year starting with 2018 Q8.

Hi Epirali,

yes, Volkswagen/Audi is a contender, but a relatively weak one. I'm not looking at their tainted image here, or their state of finance, and I don't doubt their engineering prowess. What is rather disappointing is that VW's goals, according to a statement of VWs CSO Jürgen Stackmann, are to sell ~1 milion electric/hybrids a year in 2025. This is a projected 10% of sales (where BMW supposedly sells 15% hybrid/electrics at this moment allready). Please note: this includes hybrids! Not nearly ambitious enough IMHO, for it means that electric, especially full-electric, remains a niche within the company. See this article in the 'Süddeutsche Zeitung', if you're interested in a nice read, in German ;):
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/auto/zukunft-von-volkswagen-vw-will-den-volks-tesla-bauen-1.3005493
I'm not sure they will be able to compete with the 'A to B electric boxes' from the far east that I'm sure will be flooding the market by '25.

We'll see. BMWs new 'normal' platform (introduced in the new 7 series) should/could be used as a basis for a BEV, so it's said.

Still, the lackluster embrace of innovative, forward looking engineering is dissapointing (to me) to say the least.

Steven
 
I just read this update this morning. Understandably, I'm a little perturbed by the information, if the article's implications are true.

In any case, it seems that the 2017 model year version is still on track (i.e., the one with the increased EV and REx mileage), so that's in my plans to purchase/lease next year. My current i3-REx lease comes up in July 2017, so hopefully that plan will stick.
 
2018 will be the facelift for the i3, not a completely new car. The "sportier brother" mentioned is the i3s that has been known about for some time. The i3 was not a cheap car to develop, it will not have a 3 year life cycle and be replaced by a completely new car in 2018, thats nuts. With 2018 being the face-lift year it signify's the midpoint of the cars life cycle, it will either be a 7 or 8 year life cycle meaning the second generation could come either 2021 or 2022.

EDIT: The article's argument comparing the i3 sales to the TM3's reservations is crap, a reservation is $1000 for a car that may or may not ever exist, who knows how long it will take to fill all of those reservations assuming none of them give up and decided to buy a competing product. 25,000 BEV i3's at a median price of $40,000 is $1billion, 370,000 reservations at $1000 is only $370million.
 
FWIW, the process of building the i3 was never intended to be super high volume. About 50K/year is about it. After that, it would be less expensive to build it a different way. You can get an indication of how to accomplish higher volumes with CFRP with the newest 7-series.
 
imolazhp said:
2018 will be the facelift for the i3, not a completely new car. The "sportier brother" mentioned is the i3s that has been known about for some time.

Can't find any articles or info about this. Could you share?
 
I don't understand the doom and gloom reaction to the Reuters piece. BMW has stated over and over that the i. sub-brand stands for innovation. Its role is to develop and commercialize new technologies so they can migrate to the main BMW brand. We've seen that with the 7-series Carbon Core, the iPerformance plug-in variants, and the product road map indicating the entire line will be electrified within a decade.

The company's ability to develop these innovations largely in-house has been all but ignored by the press. In contrast, GM relied so heavily on suppliers for its up-coming EV that insiders dubbed it the LG Bolt.

To me the news in the Reuters article is the projection that software engineers will be 50% of the BMW R&D staff within five years. If you consider that tidbit along with the reports from several months ago that talks between Apple and BMW ended, you might start to understand the real significance. Board member Froehlich has signaled that they now see software on par with drivetrain and manufacturing abilities. In other words, BMW doesn't intend to become a mere hardware supplier for Google, Microsoft, et al.
 
a4refillpad said:
Can't find any articles or info about this. Could you share?

If you are asking about he facelift, you won't find any articles about it, yet, we will start seeing spy shots a few months after the longer range 2017's start hitting the dealers. If you are asking about the i3s here is a link from earlier this year.

http://www.bmwblog.com/2016/02/22/bmw-is-planning-an-i3s-model-with-more-driving-range-sportier/

It (the i3s) was well discussed on the FB group as well if you have access to that just search the group.
 
psquare said:
Yawn. No news post. Nothing to see. Move on.

Listen as an owner of and i8 and an i3, and someone who was looking forward to the i5 this is kind of depressing. I would have not been so upset if this wasn't combined with top I brand people being poached last year by a Chinese electric car maker. Now it makes sense I didn't understand why they would leave BMW. I mean money could have been good but maybe they saw the writing on the wall.
 
They can do whatever they want with the "i" division as long they integrate the "i" series car into their normal BMW branding.

After all, the division did its work well and they can now continue to release awesome electric vehicles and continue to do researches on some other field with their creative team.

Maybe that's the way this information should be taken.

And if it's not like that, then it is a real shame because they were, from my point of view, the only real innovative brand on this domain.
 
Brice said:
They can do whatever they want with the "i" division as long they integrate the "i" series car into their normal BMW branding.

After all, the division did its work well and they can now continue to release awesome electric vehicles and continue to do researches on some other field with their creative team.

Maybe that's the way this information should be taken.

And if it's not like that, then it is a real shame because they were, from my point of view, the only real innovative brand on this domain.

From your post to the BMW planning gods! If that happens then I would say the i division was an amazing success and BMW will be ahead of other by a good 5-10 years. If they just abandon it and go back to their fleet, then not so much.
 
BMW Blog just published a piece titled, We were wrong about BMW’s i Division shifting strategies

"See, when most of us think of BMW’s i Division, we think of electric cars. And, because we think only of electrification, we are constantly comparing what BMW i is doing to what Telsa is doing and putting it into a conversation it never really sought out to be it. BMW’s i Division is actually intended to represent ‘ideas’ or ‘innovation’. The i Division is about pushing the automobile forward into the future, regardless of what that may be, whether it be electrification, hybridization, automation or a combination of all three."

http://www.bmwblog.com/2016/06/06/wrong-bmws-division-shifting-strategies/

Can we stop the teeth gnashing over the recent non-news?
 
I don't see how that changes anything. To me the interesting aspects of the i division was innovation in drive train and methods of car building. The i8 is a fantastic example of how cars could be, and an i3 is a flawed but good attempt. I was hoping for continued development, revised i3s, new variants.

So great if I division is innovating other things. It still means we will likely not see any major progress on i3 and i8. I personally think this was because the i3 was badly positioned. It is too expensive to be a quirky looking city car, couldn't decide between "sporty" and great transport so it's neither, and wasn't compelling enough for the dollar differential. There are options at $32k with same or slightly better range, $70k at 220 miles and then a car that wth options gets to $47-48 and offers the same range. The i8 is very expensive but is not competing with anything in that range.

I for one had hoped that in future iterations that would have offered 200 miles+Rex which would have made an excellent differentiator (long electric and extended range) and smoothed out some aspects of the drivetrain (which they seemed to have done in firmware changes).

Now that would have been a killer BEV around the same price point.
 
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