The new management team at BMW has said that they won’t be following the footsteps of Mercedes and Audi by creating exclusive electric vehicle architecture to better compete against Tesla.
Oliver Zipse, CEO of BMW has belief in BMW’s “integrated” platform, which strengthens as a unique selling point to the customers for both EVs and combustion engines. Hence, he wants to continue the risk-averse strategy of his predecessor, Harald Krueger.
Heavy investments will be needed by the European carmakers to match fleet emissions of 59 grams per Km by 2030 from a starting point of 95g/km starting from next year. As per BMW, by 2030, every second car sold in Europe by the company will be a plug-in hybrid or a battery-electric one.
Udo Haenle, BMW executive said:
In our view, market forecasts are too uncertain to warrant inflexible, electro-only platforms. What we don’t want is for our plants to operate below capacity.
From a monetary perspective, this makes sense because in the starting, the markets move to EV production will see them rapidly adapt to the change in demand. Haenle added:
Building a new plant would cost roughly 1 billion euros, whereas ramping up existing facilities to produce battery-electric vehicles will amount to a three-digit-million-euro investment, mainly for body shop and assembly.
BMW will continue its current policy of one design for front-wheel-drive and one for rear-wheel-drive cars. This difference isn’t seen in the EV-only side and as per critics; the strategy is more focused on finances rather than innovation. Haenle, has fired back saying “We are not going to compromise on anything that will impact the customer.”
