[RahulNagaraj]

Eight years ago, BMW was one of the first major automakers to sell a battery-powered car: The i3 broke ground with its lightweight carbon-fibre body and aluminium chassis.

But lately, the German company, known for its sporty luxury cars and “ultimate driving machines,” has fallen behind in the global race to develop the next generation of electric vehicles.

Unlike General Motors or Volvo, BMW has not set a date to bury the internal combustion engine. Unlike Volkswagen, it has not begun selling a full line of vehicles designed from the ground up to run on batteries. As other auto executives wax optimistic about an electric future, Oliver Zipse, the BMW chief executive, has criticized plans by the European Union to ban gasoline and diesel engines by 2035.

The perception that BMW is an electric vehicle laggard helps explain why investors have begun to sour on the company’s shares, which fell even after the company reported a healthy quarterly net profit this month of 4.8 billion euros, or $5.7 billion. BMW shares have tumbled 18 percent since early June.

At BMW headquarters in Munich, company executives say they will prove the critics wrong in coming months. In the fall, BMW will begin selling a battery-powered sport utility vehicle, the iX, in Europe; it will arrive in the United States early next year. The iX will be the first BMW since the i3 designed around battery power, rather than being a conversion of a gasoline or diesel car.

No one really knows what sort of electric vehicles will prove popular as the market expands beyond early adopters, who tend to be affluent and environmentally conscious. Will they want car designs that signal a break with the past? Or will they want electric cars that look and perform like the gasoline models they’re used to?

It’s too early to tell. Sales of electrified vehicles are growing fast, but remain less than 4 percent of the total market in the United States. The market is dominated by Tesla, which is building a factory in Berlin. Tesla’s Model 3 is the best-selling electric car in Western Europe, where plug-in vehicles accounted for 17 percent of new car sales in the first half of the year, or one million vehicles, according to Schmidt Automotive Research in Berlin.

Unlike Volkswagen and Daimler, which are building their own battery factories with partners, BMW is buying batteries from suppliers like Northvolt of Sweden and CATL of China. BMW, like its rivals, is also developing its own technology. At the Munich research centre, the automaker is looking for chemical recipes that will be safer and lighter and store more energy per kilogram. Suppliers will build batteries according to BMW specifications.

Soon after the iX arrives at European dealers in the fall, BMW will begin selling the i4, a high-performance battery-powered sedan. As a short test ride in Munich demonstrated, the i4 has the kind of head-banging acceleration that electric power can deliver. But the i4 shares components with BMW models with gasoline engines, a feature that has attracted critics.

In 2025, BMW plans to begin building vehicles on a platform — a collection of components that can be shared by numerous different models — that is optimized for battery power. That is the year when many analysts believe that electric vehicles will become less expensive to buy than gasoline models, and sales will take off.

If so, BMW’s timing could prove to be perfect.

So far, though, the market has moved more quickly than predictions. In Europe, sales of electric vehicles have boomed during the pandemic. In the United States, the Biden administration gave electric vehicles a push this month when it unveiled a plan to raise sales of electric vehicles to 50 percent of new cars by 2030.

Source: NYTimes

[Akshay6988]

It can catch up with other EV manufacturers definitely if their design head stops smoking whatever he's having right now and make some good looking E - BMWs.

[volkman10]

First BMW Neue Klasse models to be Sedan and SUV.

The first to arrive will be the sedan towards the middle of the decade.

With the i4 and iX, BMW currently has two of the hottest products on the EV market. These will be joined by a new generation of zero-emissions vehicles towards the middle of the decade, underpinned by what the Bavarian company calls Neue Klasse. It is a new architecture that is currently under development, and we will first see it under the skin of an electric sedan and an electric SUV.

Oliver Zipse, CEO:

From 2025, we will make the next big leap with the Neue Klasse: the Neue Klasse defines what the BMW Group stands for in the future. At the start, we are planning a compact sedan in the 3 Series segment and a sporty SUV. By the end of the decade, the Neue Klasse is expected to account for more than half of our sales.

The first product based on the Neue Klasse will arrive in 2025 and there are already rumors about a potential supercar using the new architecture.

Source: BMW