BMW

It has been quite difficult to follow BMW’s position on electric vehicles over the past year. The German automaker’s electric vehicle leadership under ‘BMW i’  left to join a newly formed Chinese EV startup, and they announced having put their EV plans on the “back burner.”

Now comments made by Stefan Juraschek, Vice President of Electric-Powertrain Development at BMW, are giving us a better understanding of the reason why the company is holding back when it comes to EVs.
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You have to give it to BMW for being at the forefront of smart charging programs for electric vehicles. The German automaker has been running several special programs to get more out of an electric car fleet, including offering grid services in California as we recently reported.

This week, BMW announced yet another electric vehicle charging program, BMW Digital Charging Service (DCS), to manage charging sessions in order to save money and get more out of home solar installations.
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BMW, Daimler’s Mercedes, Ford, and Volkswagen’s Audi and Porsche announced today that they are creating a joint-venture with the goal of a “quick build-up of a sizable number of stations in order to enable long-range travel for battery electric vehicle drivers.”

The new venture is similar to the Ultra E project announced earlier this year to deploy 25 new charging station for electric vehicles along the trans-European transport network (TEN-T), but it’s apparently a separate and much more ambitious project to deploy 400 stations across Europe.
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At a time when almost all automakers are announcing upgrades to their mid-range electric vehicles under their 2017 models, like VW with the e-Golf or Ford with the Focus Electric, you will not hear about an upgrade to BMW’s i3 since it was actually announced earlier this year – when they introduced their new 33 kWh battery pack upgrade.

It was a welcomed upgrade, but not the next generation design refresh that people have been waiting for. Now sources say that the German automaker is working on a design refresh for the 2018 BMW i3 to be released next year and it will again feature a range increase – up to 50%.
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Last year, BMW announced the first trial of its ‘ChargeForward’ program to recruit BMW i3 owners willing to automatically delay the charging of their vehicle at the request of the local electric utility, PG&E, in order to offset peak demand.

This week BMW released the findings of the trial, which it deems successful, and it announced a second round of the program with more BMW i3 owners and for a longer period of time. 
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Last month, we shared reports that Lit Motors, a small startup best known for developing self-balancing two-wheel vehicles, became an acquisition target for several major companies, including BMW. In an interesting development, BMW unveiled today its own self-balancing electric motorcycle concept.
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Last month, we reported on BMW’s board of management being expected to vote on a possible greenlight for production on 3 more electric vehicles to bring to its lineup. Now we learn that at least two have been approved: a long-rumoured all-electric SUV and an all-electric Mini.
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BMW has a couple of initiatives to give a second life to used battery packs from its electric vehicles. Earlier this year, the German automaker announced a wall mounted battery storage system, not unlike the Tesla Powerwall, using BMW i3 22 kWh or 33kWh battery packs.

Today it announced that it completed and started testing, in partnership with Bosch, a new utility-scale energy storage facility again using used electric vehicle battery packs –  but the scale is much more impressive.
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BMW and VW in partnership with ChargePoint, an electric charging station operator, announced that they completed the installation of 95 DC fast-charging stations in the US as part of a program launched last year.
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While BMW’s electric vehicle plans are not entirely clear as of late, the German automaker is still going forward with a few new additions to its EV lineup. The latest is a new generation of its C evolution electric bike unveiled this week. It will make its official debut at the Paris Motor Show next month.
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If only half the reports coming out of Germany about BMW in the past few months are true, the automaker’s electric vehicle strategy is a real issue dividing the company’s top management. In April,  several BMW executives in the automaker’s electric vehicle leadership, also known as the BMW ‘i’ brand, left the German automaker to join a newly formed Chinese EV startup.

The automaker has since reportedly put its EV plans on the “back burner”, but now it’s ready to try to reinvest in fully electric vehicles. Media reports coming from Germany suggest that the board will vote by the end of the month on greenlighting all-electric 3 Series, X4 and Mini for production.
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With recent studies showing electric vehicles would cover the needs of the vast majority of car owners in the US, nationwide availability of electric vehicles has never been more important. A new study from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) paints an interesting picture of EV availability in the US, praising Tesla, BMW and Nissan for their nationwide availability, and shaming Honda and Toyota for their little effort in making plug-in vehicles available.
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After unveiling its ‘Vision NEXT100’ plan, BMW was reportedly “putting electric vehicles on the back burner” in order to focus on self-driving. The company only officially announced a new BMW i8 in 2018, hopefully all-electric this time, and its iNEXT all-electric and autonomous car in 2021. The iNEXT will be based on a concept unveiled earlier this year.

Now a new report on the German automaker’s updated electric vehicle timeline claims to give more insights into vehicle releases over the next 5-6 years, and it is just as disappointing as BMW’s official timeline.
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As it was reported in the first few week of the new electric vehicle discount program in Germany, the scheme is spurring sales for BMW’s electric vehicle offering, mainly the BMW i3. We now have the statistics for the first full month of the program and it confirms the previous reports.
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When Nissan released an “attack ad” against Tesla’s reservation process for the Model 3, they were mostly laughed at by Model 3 reservation holders – at least in the comment section of our article about the new ad campaign – but this new ad by BMW is arguably even worse.
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BMW released its July US sales report this week and the German automaker confirmed a significant increase in BMW i3 sales, which is especially surprising considering the upgraded 33 kWh battery pack has been confirmed for the 2016 i3 set to be available in the coming months.

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As we’ve often discussed before, the Chevy Bolt EV is often presented at the first real competitor to the Tesla Model 3 simply because they have a similar range – over 200 miles – and similar sticker prices – starting at $37,500 for the Bolt and $35,000 for the Model 3, but it’s really not that simple.

While priced like one, the Bolt EV is not a mid-sized luxury vehicle. If it wasn’t electric, it would be similar to Chevrolet’s Sonic, which is priced $15,000 cheaper. On the other hand, Tesla’s Model 3 is being marketed as a mid-sized sport/luxury vehicle and certainly looks more like one than the Bolt – which is more of a utility hatchback. Prior to its unveiling, Tesla CEO Elon Musk often talked about the BMW 3 Series as a reference for competition to the Model 3. That recently switched to the Audi A3.

Now it looks like the Model 3 will actually have to compete with an all-electric version of the BMW 3 Series. The vehicle could be introduced with the next generation 2018 models, but the all-electric version is expected later.
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Earlier this year, Germany announced its first electric vehicle incentive program to spur adoption of green vehicles in the country. Financed by both the state and the local auto industry, the program offers a €4,000 discount at the purchase of an all-electric vehicle and €3,000 for a plug-in hybrid.

The program is capped to electric vehicles with a starting price of less than €60,000, which prompt Tesla to respond and claim that it was purposely left out by the auto industry since its vehicles start at over €60,000. While the program is not helping Tesla, it is certainly helping BMW as reports are coming out claiming that sales of the BMW i3 are somewhat unsurprisingly significantly rising in Germany since the launch of the program earlier this month.
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As we discussed before, electric car fires are fairly rare and nothing points to them being more frequent than in gas-powered vehicles, but this instance is particularly unusual because it actually occurred in a BMW i3 owned and operated by the Italian state police in Rome.
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Just a few weeks after we learned that BMW is putting its electric vehicle programs on the “back burner” in order to focus its ‘i’ brand, under which the German automaker has been releasing its electric vehicles, on self-driving cars instead. We now learn that the automaker is reportedly about to announce an important partnership with Intel and Mobileye to develop its self-driving cars.
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Earlier this month, we reported on how BMW is putting electric vehicles on the ‘back burner’ to focus ‘i’ brand on self-driving cars. The German automakers announced its plan for electric vehicles and it looks like we shouldn’t expect much until at least the turn of the decade.

But now hope for BMW’s EV programs comes in the form of a new report claiming that the company is currently working on an all-electric version of the BMW i8, which is only offered as a plug-in hybrid with very limited electric range at the moment.
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