BMW

The best way to know if a legacy automaker is getting serious about electric vehicles is to see if they are investing in converting their current manufacturing capacity to electric vehicle manufacturing capacity. We recently reported on Daimler and Volkswagen making the move in Germany and BMW now announces that it is following suit.

Today, the automaker confirmed that it will build the first fully electric MINI in 2019 and a fully electric BMW X3 in 2020 at its Leipzig plant, while the upcoming “fully electric BMW iNEXT” will be manufactured at the Dingolfing plant in 2021.
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Elon Musk wanted Tesla to create a sense of urgency for other automakers to move faster on electric vehicles and accelerate the overall transition to sustainable transport. It helped for some, but others still don’t take Tesla or EVs seriously.

It’s certainly not the case for BMW anymore since the company is now saying that it was under “an electric assault” in reference to Tesla and other automakers working on electric vehicles. The German automaker seems now more inclined to move into the electric vehicle space.
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BMW of North America and the US National Parks Services had a lovely event at the Thomas Edison National Historical Park, site of Edison’s West Orange, N.J., laboratory and home yesterday and Electrek was on the scene. The event was the announcement that BMW would be partnering with the National Park Foundation, National Park Service and Department of Energy to bring 100 EV charging stations to National Parks like this one. BMW will also be footing the electric bill for the first 6 months of use, making it free for customers. I have just one little complaint…
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We have been really suspicious of BMW’s plan for electrification mainly because they seem to have left an unnecessary 7-year gap in their electrification effort between the launch of ‘BMW i’ with the i3 in 2013 and the next ‘i’ vehicle, which is expected in 2020-2021. The weird-looking all-electric concepts that they have unveiled since are also not helping – pictured above.

At its shareholder meeting this week, the German automaker has laid out its plan for electric vehicles in more details and it now seems to be going in the right direction.
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The Formula E, an all-electric racing championship, has been gaining a lot of credibility over the last few year with several serious automotive companies, like Renault, Citroen, Mahindra, Jaguar, and Audi already involved in the championship, as well as a few newcomers like NextEV and Faraday Future.

BMW Motorsport has also been involved through its backing of the MS Amlin Andretti team, but now the German automaker is announcing its intention to enter the season 5 of the racing series with its own team now that it has been approved as a manufacturer.
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Vattenfall, an important energy company in Europe, unveiled last year a new 2.8 MWh energy storage facility built with batteries from over 100 BMW i3 electric cars.

It was an interesting project since they are using used battery modules from electric vehicles, but now the company has announced a different contract with BMW this week to buy brand new i3 battery packs directly from them for the same reason.
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As we currently understand them, BMW’s electric vehicle plans for the next few years simply consist of incremental improvements to its current lineup, BMW i3 and i8, up until its first new all-electric car, which is not expected before 2021.

It will leave BMW out of the pack of electric vehicles that premium automakers, like Mercedes, Audi, Porsche, and Jaguar, are all planning to release in the next 2-3 years.

BMW has so far only referred to the upcoming new all-electric vehicle as “iNext”, which was believed to be the long-rumoured ‘BMW i5’ electric crossover/SUV, but a new report now suggests that it could actually be a mid-range sedan to compete with the Model 3.
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Scotland Yard, London’s police department, is in the process of electrifying its fleet of cars and motorcycles. They plan to change the first 250 vehicles within the next 12 months, but their 4000-car fleet could soon be completely electric as the city battles air pollution.

They claim to be considering all the options, even hydrogen fuel cells, but Tesla is also reportedly in the running since Met chief Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe says that he spoke to CEO Elon Musk about trialing Tesla’s vehicles.
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Nissan and BMW have been partnering on the development of charging stations to support their respective growing fleets of electric vehicles for a few years now. EVgo has been building the network in the US for the two automakers and it now includes over 668 DC fast-charging stations in over 50 metro areas.

The companies are announcing today another batch of 174 new DC fast-charging station across 33 states.
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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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