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BMW CEO to quit after carmaker loses early lead in electrics

170 points by reddotX 7y ago

mtgx 7y ago
"Who knew EVs would be more than a niche/compliance car market?!" -- the people running BMW's i-division. I'm sure years from now Tesla will get no credit for dragging incumbent carmakers kicking and screaming into the EV market, but they really should get the lion's share of the credit for this. Because I'm certain that without Tesla, BMW and other carmakers wouldn't even have started making "EV platforms" or EVs from scratch until 2030+.
- DamnYuppie 7y ago
  If memory serves me correct Toyota Prius was really the first to push the Hybrid/EV concept mainstream. That isn't to say that Tesla didn't have an impact but there were EV initiatives underway well before them.
  - aiddun 7y ago
    Yeah. I remember the Chevy Volt (Electric w/ gas reserve) was decently covered/had decent popularity back in the early 2010's. I think there was another notable pure electric one as well.
  - jchw 7y ago
    Even though this is true, I actually think I agree with the premise that Tesla was a big deal here. For all that is wrong with Tesla, they made electric cars really cool, even to car people. I think that step was an important but incredibly difficult step. The Prius is fine. Practical vehicles. Probably still a more reasonable choice for many. But, Tesla made electric cars look like the future, even to the average person. I must add that I am not really a Tesla zealot. I drive a Civic, Teslas seem too expensive (not necessarily over priced, just too expensive for me) and have their fair share of issues. But what they did for the perception of EVs is different than what anyone else has done imo.
    - Gibbon1 7y ago
      The Tesla broke usual electric car strategy by making something hot not utterly lame and stodgy[1]. Which is what all electric cars were until then. The economics of that actually worked. The Prius at least fit into Toyota's market segment. [1] This is not totally true. There were some once off electric cars in the 1990's that were sporty. Friend dated a women that owned one. It only had a range of about 40-50 miles but it was FAST.
      - justapassenger 7y ago
        > The Tesla broke usual electric car strategy by making something hot not utterly lame and stodgy[1]. Which is what all electric cars were until then. The economics of that actually worked. Tesla did a great job at making EV cool, there's no question about it. BUT, economics of that are still TBD. They still fail to achieve any sustainable profit as a business, few years after their mass market vehicle debuted, and have to keep on raising money, on very unfavorable terms.
        matthewdgreen 7y ago
        Tesla cracked the problem of making people buy electric cars in significant numbers. Everything else is a supply-chain and manufacturing optimization problem. Extremely challenging, obviously, and maybe Tesla won't be the winner. But those problems are fundamentally irrelevant until the you've cracked the problem of mass sales.
        justapassenger 7y ago
        Making people want a product isn't enough to get economics to work. They struggle to produce it cheaply enough, at least as of right now. Manufacturing, at scale and within costs is really really hard. Tesla's initial math for cracking the economy was based on full automation of the production, that failed spectacularly. As a result they have a lot of human labor costs they didn't plan for, so problem of optimizing it got even harder. Did Tesla made desirable product? Yes, of course. Can they crack the economy of it? We'll see.
  - capsulecorp 7y ago
    I don't think BMW started an EV division to take on the prius though (I could be mistaken). The point being that Tesla is forcing the industry hand to move faster than it would on its own. That isn't to say the Prius didn't have an impact but Tesla carries significantly more weight in catalyzing progress than the Prius.
  - ckozlowski 7y ago
    They certainly helped. The 2nd Gen Prius (which was completely redesigned and features the "shuttlepod" shape we're all familiar with today was launched at a time when oil prices were climbing rapidly, peaking in '08. No one remembers the 1st gen model, which coincidentally launched when oil was around an all-time low. But my parents and many others got the 2nd gen, and I recall even more conservative-minded people being quoted as driving the Prius for "national security' reasons. It was a ground breaking car, yes. But it had the benefit of taking advantage of a global price spike in oil.
  - mtgx 7y ago
    No, Toyota's Prius pushed hybrids. By the time it wanted to push pure EVs, Tesla was a much more established EV brand. Same with the electric RAV4, which I believe was the first EV in the past 20 years or so. They made it, and then barely changed anything at all to it 20 years later. Toyota doesn't care about EVs and never did, even when it struck them in the face.
- tomjakubowski 7y ago
  This idea that Tesla dragged everyone else "kicking and screaming" into the electric era idea is nonsense. Nissan was shipping Leaf models in the tens of thousands a year when Tesla was still producing just a few hundred Roadsters.
  - spurmboy 7y ago
    No, actually you are wrong! I’ve been an ev freak for a long time. Lots of people made EVs. Are you going to say next that Tesla didn’t do anything because karma was making evs as well ten years ago? Tesla absolutely did drag everyone else kicking and screaming, besides Nissan and some others. Tesla was the first company to make a serious ev that looked like a normal car and claimed to be like a normal car, not some niche golf cart like the leaf. Tesla was the first one to encroach on ice territory in this way, and everyone hated them for it. The other car companies hated them, the New York Times hated them and wrote false stories about the model s, even top gear got in on the action and staged a battery failure on their review of the roadster. Gawker maintained a death watch on Tesla. People in general loved to hate Tesla. I remember very clearly because as a Tesla “fan boy” in 2010 I didn’t make very many friends to say the very least. To EV people who were watching all this happen a decade ago, and there weren’t many of us back then, the overwhelming consensus was that Tesla was the only one pushing things forward and they got enormous pushback from every other entity in the automotive industry as a whole besides a few people. Nissan was not pushing things forward. They made a golf cart that looked like an insect. They showed no signs of making a real sedan like Tesla. They didn’t build charging infrastructure. I’m sorry man but you are flat out wrong. Go ahead and call me fanboy, it won’t make you any less wrong.
    - evanweaver 7y ago
      As someone who has owned both the Leaf and the Model S I agree with this. The only value of the Leaf was it was a very inexpensive but embarrassing way to get a carpool lane sticker in the Bay Area. It could not drive at highway speed for any material distance so “commuter’s golf cart” is accurate. But now the Model S is the best sedan on the road at any price, and I’ve driven the 2019 BMWs and others. The interiors are cluttered up with incoherent “luxury” features to try to justify the price point, but nothing works that well together except for the drivetrain itself. I don’t want a crystal shifter knob and eight different buttons to lower the rear seats and a head-up display that occasionally knows the speed limit and iPads protruding from the seat backs and a lane-keeping feature that randomly jerks the wheel. This stuff makes the retracting door handles on the Tesla seem almost practical. I do want a car that drives great and looks great and minimizes maintenance and running costs. No ICE drivetrain can deliver the same acceleration thrill as the Tesla drivetrain, so what’s the point? The only thing left is range and hauling power, so pickup trucks, vans, and for now, SUVs.
- devnonymous 7y ago
  I'm just going to leave this here : http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/223/electric-car-timeline.html http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/223/electric-car-timeline.html Research more about the 1997-2000 period mentioned there. Sure Tesla had a part to play in the adoption of EVs but it is more about existing at the right time and bringing on the right (for the business) ceo than about any special vision.
- carlsborg 7y ago
  To some extent true, but Bmw i8 phev was available for delivery 2014. Bmw i3 in late 2013. Model S deliveries began in mid 2012.
  - FullyFunctional 7y ago
    Everything began with the Tesla Roadster showing that you could build an attractive all-electric car. That was in 2008. There is no way anyone could seriously claim that was an evolution of the hybrid lackluster NiMH Toyota Prius. ADD: what actually begat the Roadster was AC Propulsion’s 2003 Tzero [1], a company which can be traced back to the famous EV1 (of “Who Killed The Electric Car”). [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_Propulsion_tzero https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_Propulsion_tzero
    - techslave 7y ago
      > Everything began with the Tesla Roadster showing that you could build an attractive all-electric car. no. the car mfrs already knew you could build such a thing. the reason they didn’t is they had no reason to build a loss leader product.
      - FullyFunctional 7y ago
        And thus Tesla created the reason
- draw_down 7y ago
  Mmm, forgive me if I don't agree that Tesla is suffering from a lack of praise.
- adrianN 7y ago
  I think the old car companies would have happily ignored Tesla for way longer, had China not started demanding that a good chunk of new cars sold have to be electric. It's fear for the Chinese market that really drives drives the incumbents to EVs.
theredbox 7y ago
The EV is the new iphone and everyone is struggling to create the next android.
- lowdose 7y ago
  I would love to see the boardroom cameras of competitors viewing Elon Musks explanation of their data aggregator ml setup in the whole deployed tesla fleet of 400.000 vehicles during autonomous car day.
  - Fins 7y ago
    Most of them look down on actively killing their customers. How did that full-self-driving trip across the US in 2016 go?
    - dang 7y ago
      Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- r00fus 7y ago
  This is a very interesting analogy, with Musk:Jobs and Tesla:Apple Back in the mid 00s, everyone thought the next big think looked like a smaller PC (analogy: EV cars) or a souped up phone (analogy: EV bikes/scooters). The iPhone changed the game (with Android quickly cementing that change). What happens when it's more convenient to charge or have an EV-as-service than gas-up or get a cab/uber? The automobile industry is due for a massive shakeup and the more efficient batteries and more widespread chargers get, the more likely that the future cuts out the petroleum economy.
  - FullyFunctional 7y ago
    It’s been more convenient to charge than pump gas since the original Roadster, but inertia is real. However Tesla single handedly created this industry and adoption have been pretty good IMO. Norway [1] is proof that the only thing holding back good EVs is price and that’s largely about the battery. [1] incentives mades Tesla far more affordable about over 50% of ALL cars sold were Teslas (last year?)
high_derivative 7y ago
The corrosive effect of misallocated inherited wealth. For context, BMW's biggest shareholders are the Quandt/Klatten family. Through the entire supply chain, hundreds of thousands of jobs and massive impact on the wider economy, electrification, competitive effects in the energy market, and climate change, all depending on a handful of people. People who (in this particular context) have no particular motivation for..really anything, with virtually infinite inherited wealth. Especially not to rock the boat or drive any vision forward. That, in a nutshell, is why Germany's car industry is dying long-term. VW ownership same thing via Porsche SE. I find this incredibly interesting, how entire economies ultimately lag and long-term may fail on the bottleneck of a few randomly selected people. Interestingly, there seems to be no good way out because disowning individuals for the collective good is a path that historically does not tend to work well for innovation either.
- theredbox 7y ago
  That could be said about anything really. The Chinese companies will inevitably fail because they will never venture outside of china in any meaningful way that would be sustainable for them. The Zaibatsus will fail because of aging population and traditionalism. The Chaebols will fail because of archaic hierarchy of the korean society.
  - high_derivative 7y ago
    I am sorry but I am not following. What can be said about anything? That it will fail for some reason? Fine, but what does that have to do with the particular point of the ownership structures of German car makers?
    - theredbox 7y ago
      They way i understood your comment is that the german car makers will fail because of inherited wealth. I am saying all of them can fail due to cultural differences. It just happens that the american can do attitude works the best and is global or tries to be global.
    - 7y ago
InTheArena 7y ago
There has been a cultural war inside of BMW for quite a while. Klaus Fröhlich, a board member and executive at BMW actually called EVS overhyped the same week that BMW unveiled their current planning around EVs. Most reviews have the Tesla Model 3 performance outperforming the similarly priced M3. Many have the LR Tesla model 3 as competitive to sometimes beating the BMW 3 series. The sales success at Tesla has come partially at the cost of BMW car sales.
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  I vaguely remember seeing market share numbers about 5 years ago and it looked like Tesla was clawing away a lot of it's market share in the US from BMW. I think the US market is only a smaller but profitable part of BMW's business. But that should have been worrying.
  - adventured 7y ago
    > I think the US market is only a smaller but profitable part of BMW's business. The US is the second largest single market for BMWs, behind China (China buys nearly twice as many BMWs as the US market now). It's about 14% of their total group unit volume (~350k out of ~2.5m). It's a similar number for Mercedes. For Porsche the US is about 20% of their sales. In 1995 they sold 95,000 BMWs in the US. By 2007 that was up to 293,000. They haven't seen a huge collapse in units sold in the US (10%-12% or so), however I think the slide backwards and continued rise of Tesla is obviously very concerning as a threat. They know they have to do something right now.
- CPLX 7y ago
  They may be competitive in some performance metrics, which of course does matter, but Teslas aren’t even remotely in the same league when it comes to fit and finish. Teslas feel cheap and poorly made. The offerings have some pretty stark differences.
  - sabareesh 7y ago
    I see people online complain about fit and finish, but not sure the credibility of people like you. I own a model 3 and there is 0 issues, if you go and do a test drive then there is 80 % chance you will end up buying it if you are in the market
dependsontheq 7y ago
The car industry has seen EVs only as compliance vehicles, sell 10% electric and you just reduced your total fleet emissions by 10%. So you might be able to stay in the business of heavy ICE luxury cars. That’s why their marketing and sales sucked there was a defined number of these to be sold and not more. Now the game is changing and the wind is turning but it’s not Tesla driving the change, it’s good old regulation. And it has always been regulation, the actors are California, China and the EU. Several countries have now decided on a defined year when the last ICE is going to be sold so the future market is already shrinking and other countries will follow. There will be no market left. Regulation.
- a_random_name 7y ago
  This is exactly what happened with incandescent light bulbs. The price for led bulbs dropped very quickly onve there was economy of scale driven by garunteed demand.
  - yyyk 7y ago
    By comparison, CFLs also increased marketshare after the ban but quickly lost most of it to LED bulbs - regulation can't help if the product is poor compared to alternatives.
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  Well will point out that Tesla has been eating BWM's lunch in the mid range luxo car market. That BWM hasn't been taking that seriously is a sign current management needs to leave.
  - eganist 7y ago
    Worse, BMW thought they were in a comfortable position to exploit their customer base for money -- cutting back on their maintenance program, warranties, etc. and banking on people to not care. If anything, BMW was driving people away from themselves faster than customers were already fleeing to e.g. Tesla or, more recently, Audi (e-tron), Jag (i-pace) and Mercedes (EQC) for electrics.
jfoster 7y ago
They should hire Elon.
- B1FF_PSUVM 7y ago
  The way Apple hired Jobs by buying NeXT? I don't think BMW (privately held) can raise the cash to buy Tesla, unless the stock really tanks. It was more expensive than Ford a while ago. P.S. And then the "culture fit" would be more fun than a barrel of monkeys - probably break the internet a few times ...
  - cr0sh 7y ago
    > The way Apple hired Jobs by buying NeXT? Not really a good comparison, since Jobs founded Apple, then left, then went back (can't recall if they begged for him back, or if he just barrelled in).
InTheArena 7y ago
It's well worth watching Doug Demuro's review of both the BMW i3 and the Tesla model 3. It will give you a quick understanding of why BMW is behind the 8 ball right now with regard to EVs.
- teachrdan 7y ago
  Can someone who knows cars tell me how valuable Doug Demuro's analysis is? I appreciate him as an entertainer but have no way to determine if what he's saying about the cars he reviews is accurate and/or useful.
  - iagovar 7y ago
    Not really much value. You don't have to be an expert, he's not definitely from the field and his analysis are not really much deep. That doesn't mean that he's a cool entertainer and his info is also useful.
    - turbo_fart_box 7y ago
      What are your qualifications that allow you to justify a clear dismissal of someone whose job is reviewing and understanding cars?
  - manigandham 7y ago
    His videos are more about the "quirks and features" as he describes, rather than an in-depth analysis of the model history, its driving dynamics, and the overall engineering. He's not a race or performance driver and doesn't have the same track experience, and only spends a short time with the car (often just a day or two) so doesn't really have a long-term perspective on it. The videos are a great and fun overview of all the little details that you might not know unless you're an owner, but it serves better as an addon to a more thorough review elsewhere of the actual driving technology and experience. SavageGeese, Remove Before Race, Carfection are good channels to follow.
    - majormajor 7y ago
AcerbicZero 7y ago
I'd prefer they quit prior to gutting the M division and turning their motorsport legacy into mass market trash. Even the M2 is overweight, overpriced, and underwhelming, though its the "best" M branded car made in the past ~10 years.
- ardit33 7y ago
  Their new M8 "performance grand tourer" weights almost as much as a Ford F-150 Truck.... not kidding
  - rys 7y ago
    You've said that repeatedly in the thread so I looked it up, and like everything it just depends. Dry weight for some F-150 configs is actually sightly less than an M8, but some configs (like the Raptor) weigh significantly more.
- frankchn 7y ago
  BMW ultimately is in the business of selling cars, not preserving a brand legacy. All the German brands are doing the same — AMG and S aren’t what they once were. Even Porsche GT cars are more pliant and daily-able than ever.
- vl 7y ago
  M2 Competition, while overpriced (like all BMWs), is universally beloved by owners.
Zenst 7y ago
VW CEO stepped down after the emissions scandal :- https://www.evo.co.uk/volkswagen/16715/martin-winterkorn-steps-down-as-volkswagen-ceo-in-wake-of-emissions-scandal https://www.evo.co.uk/volkswagen/16715/martin-winterkorn-ste... BMW also got fined and caught up in doing the same emissions scandal :- https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/car-emissions-scandal-bmw-volkswagen-daimler-charge-eu-a8856806.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/car-emission... Yet it took this for the BMW CEO to step aside!
- Thorrez 7y ago
  >BMW also got fined and caught up in doing the same emissions scandal : That seems quite different from what VW did. VW made it so emissions were good during testing but bad during regular driving. That article says BMW (and others) colluded to make emissions bad all the time. When emissions are bad all the time, the testers are not being fooled about how the emissions actually look.
- superpermutat0r 7y ago
  Stepping aside is the finest display of lack of skin in the game. Something fails, you can just leave, while not returning any of the bonuses you "earned" for your "finest" work.
  - Zenst 7y ago
    Maybe and the point about bonuses is so sadly true, but then they are never negative when things fail, maybe they need to swing both ways in such positions and install a truer sense of accountability. Perhaps another way of implementing that would be that bonuses are held in escrow for a number of years, the employee is allowed to get interest free loans against those escrow bonuses up to a point perhaps, yet those bonuses will equally be open to adjusting for bad years. Which reminds me of the reinsurance industry and names, those who invest. Even when they leave, they are still liable for future claims for a number of years, a notice period. That's fair and works.
mwfunk 7y ago
As others have pointed out, BMW has been in the EV market for years now with the i3 and i8. I think where they dropped the ball is that they seemingly didn't want to cannibalize sales of their other vehicles. The i8 is extremely niche and low-volume and can't be much of a factor for them. This left the i3 as their only EV offering. But the i3 is so unlike everything else they make, that they can't build on their appeal to people who already like their cars. That really doesn't build on any of BMW's strengths in the auto industry, in fact it attempts to avoid all of their strengths in the market (German sports luxury vehicles with a lot of history). This it really hard for them to compete with Tesla and other EV makers that are going right for the core of BMW's customer base. I think part of it was that they didn't want to cannibalize themselves, but surely BMW would rather be cannibalized by BMW than eaten by Tesla. They just didn't have the strength to make that move, for whatever reason.
- mstade 7y ago
  I think there's a lot of insight in this comment. I also believe a lot of customers (current and potential) would really like to buy an EV from an established car maker rather than a new comer, and I believe they really want it to look and feel just like a 3-series, or 5-series, or whatever they're called – not the abomination that is i3. I believe this is what everyone except Tesla understands, and I really don't know but maybe it's exactly for the reasons you lay out: they don't want to cannibalize on the gas guzzler series. But if they don't eat themselves, someone else sure will!
  - HiroshiSan 7y ago
    Completely agree with you there, both the i8 and the i3 in my opinion look like electric vehicles you'd read about in a sci-fi novel, but neither are cool or sexy.
    - ryandrake 7y ago
      Honestly the world needs more unique-looking cars. Every 4-door sedan made after 2000 or so looks like the same boring identical “bar of soap with wheels”. With only a few minor differences (headlight and tail light shape, grill, etc. from a large distance only car experts tell any of the major brands apart visually.
ardit33 7y ago
BMW has an overall product problem as well, not just EVs.... their newest cars' outside design is getting stale, and their cars just keep adding weight... They are loosing their 'sporty' pedigree and credibility fast, and turning into another me-too luxury car brand, without a proper identity and/or market distinctiveness.... Their new M8 "performance grand tourer" weights almost as much as a Ford F-150 Truck.... not kidding They can add as many 'sport badges to it', it is still an overweight sedan... The only improvement has been in interiors, where they always lagged. Their quality has actually risen last few years.
- pcurve 7y ago
  IMHO previous gen BMW models were stale. But all the new ones that came out in the recent 1-2 year have been good, including current gen 3 series. Agree on the interior quality improving, but only because they cost too much corner in previous gen models, including F30, which was an abomination.
paulcarroty 7y ago
"Hello" from Tesla.
izacus 7y ago
The internal politics in these companies has to be brutal - there are 1000+ people divisions not to mention hundreds of subcontracting companies to whom building an EV is an existential threat. Think ICE component engineers, gearbox experts, all the companies producing the parts for those cars... so MANY people that have vested interest into making sure that the corporation doesn't fire them and redirect resources to the EV project. I wonder if those kind of corporations will even be able to change their direction in time.
geff82 7y ago
Karma. One has to see that they recently launched their new X5 that was WAY bigger than the predecessor and they seemed to be quite proud of it. They even launched without a hybrid option (just as they do not offer hybrid with their brand new X2). So building new, fuel guzzling SUVs was their idea to please the shareholders instead of making cars smarter.
- frankchn 7y ago
  Vehicles getting bigger is a trend in general across all manufacturers and all vehicle categories, from the Toyota Corolla to the Lincoln Navigator. I think the only car I can think of which hasn’t gotten bigger and heavier over the years is the Mazda Miata.
todd8 7y ago
I found the BMW i3 "teardown" by a reverse engineering company Munro & Associates very interesting. The BMW EV i3 is described by them as "without a question of a doubt the most advanced vehicle on the planet ... as revolutionary as the Model-T when it came out". See [1] [1] https://youtu.be/rqiBWfsDTAA https://youtu.be/rqiBWfsDTAA
- sabareesh 7y ago
  Did you see any of the latest videos where he compares i3, m3 and bolt
- patfla 7y ago
  That's from January 2015 - much has changed since then.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  BMW: We see those Model-T panel gaps and can innovate by making ours twice as wide.
reubenswartz 7y ago
Good. Maybe this will help. I’m not a “car guy”, but I appreciate driving dynamics enough that I special ordered a BMW, picked it up in Munich, drove around Europe, shipped it back and drove it in the states for 12 years. Really nice car. Got to test drive the Model S a few times and was impressed. But it’s expensive, and despite the wonders of the low center of gravity and good balance, it’s heavy. Also got to try a 3-series “E” as a loaner. Turned it in wondering why the %#%* they didn’t just make it all electric, instead of the 11 mile electric range they gave it. I would have bought that car immediately. When the model 3 came out, it seemed faster and slightly cheaper than the most comparable 3 series. Personally, I prefer the Tesla interior to the Bmw. The handling is much better than the S, and with the 3 series handling no longer the focal point, I think the Tesla is more fun to drive, too. Which leaves me scratching my head. I can only conclude that most traditional car companies are run by ICE people who believe in tweaking engines to get more power. They just can’t imagine that electric propulsion is not just an environmental thing, but a better driving experience— instant torque, low center of gravity, great balance— all the stuff that BMW was supposed to be good at.
princeb 7y ago
there's too much talk of tesla. BMW's main benchmark is Daimler and BMW lost the ICE race to them and also the EV lead. Tesla didn't make enough cars to be a threat in the last 4 years. all in all a very incompetent CEO. the only one in BMW history not to have an 8 year mandate.
RickJWagner 7y ago
BMW used to make amazing sports sedans, too. They still have a few compelling products, but largely they've lost their edge. Hopefully this will shake things up.
- pentae 7y ago
  Have you even seen the M2 Competition?
golover721 7y ago
Honestly BMW lost its way long before electrics. The BMW pedigree was always about the drivability. They were never as “luxurious” as their competitors but they were so much more fun to drive. Somewhere along the way they lost that and became just another luxury car brand.
Ice_cream_suit 7y ago
I am in the target market for a BMW i3. However, I was turned off by the bizarre appearance of the car. I am pretty thick skinned, but would still be thinking that other motorists were laughing their heads off, while I was driving it. Why do manufacturers feel obliged to make new technology cars looks like cheap and nasty toys ?
pentae 7y ago
Meanwhile, the Porsche CEO recently wrote an opinion piece for USA Today where he writes "Porsche thinks you’ll want your next car to be electric" https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/06/17/porsche-predicts-american-consumers-adopt-electric-cars-column/1287505001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/06/17/porsche-pr... And they've been making a lot of noise about their plan to shift their lineup to full electric (not watered down hybrids) for some time now.
hbarka 7y ago
Perhaps the internal combustion engine is the last dying gasp of analog propulsion. Internal fire will be left to rockets.
aetherspawn 7y ago
How did they not see this coming though? Nobody wants an i3 because it’s a stupid looking car with no market edge over I.e. a Tesla And nobody can afford an i8 So they may as well threw their market lead for nothing. They failed to make a practical vehicle, like the electric 3-series sedan that probably everyone wished they made.
fok 7y ago
Remember the first sign in 2016: https://electrek.co/2016/03/07/bmw-ceo-tesla-interview-model-x-hit-head/ https://electrek.co/2016/03/07/bmw-ceo-tesla-interview-model...
kayhi 7y ago
If you need electrical work in Ohio, check out https://www.hcresidential.com/ https://www.hcresidential.com/

170 points by reddotX 7y ago

mtgx 7y ago

"Who knew EVs would be more than a niche/compliance car market?!" -- the people running BMW's i-division. I'm sure years from now Tesla will get no credit for dragging incumbent carmakers kicking and screaming into the EV market, but they really should get the lion's share of the credit for this. Because I'm certain that without Tesla, BMW and other carmakers wouldn't even have started making "EV platforms" or EVs from scratch until 2030+.

DamnYuppie 7y ago
If memory serves me correct Toyota Prius was really the first to push the Hybrid/EV concept mainstream. That isn't to say that Tesla didn't have an impact but there were EV initiatives underway well before them.
- aiddun 7y ago
  Yeah. I remember the Chevy Volt (Electric w/ gas reserve) was decently covered/had decent popularity back in the early 2010's. I think there was another notable pure electric one as well.
- jchw 7y ago
  Even though this is true, I actually think I agree with the premise that Tesla was a big deal here. For all that is wrong with Tesla, they made electric cars really cool, even to car people. I think that step was an important but incredibly difficult step. The Prius is fine. Practical vehicles. Probably still a more reasonable choice for many. But, Tesla made electric cars look like the future, even to the average person. I must add that I am not really a Tesla zealot. I drive a Civic, Teslas seem too expensive (not necessarily over priced, just too expensive for me) and have their fair share of issues. But what they did for the perception of EVs is different than what anyone else has done imo.
  - Gibbon1 7y ago
    The Tesla broke usual electric car strategy by making something hot not utterly lame and stodgy[1]. Which is what all electric cars were until then. The economics of that actually worked. The Prius at least fit into Toyota's market segment. [1] This is not totally true. There were some once off electric cars in the 1990's that were sporty. Friend dated a women that owned one. It only had a range of about 40-50 miles but it was FAST.
    - justapassenger 7y ago
      > The Tesla broke usual electric car strategy by making something hot not utterly lame and stodgy[1]. Which is what all electric cars were until then. The economics of that actually worked. Tesla did a great job at making EV cool, there's no question about it. BUT, economics of that are still TBD. They still fail to achieve any sustainable profit as a business, few years after their mass market vehicle debuted, and have to keep on raising money, on very unfavorable terms.
      - matthewdgreen 7y ago
        Tesla cracked the problem of making people buy electric cars in significant numbers. Everything else is a supply-chain and manufacturing optimization problem. Extremely challenging, obviously, and maybe Tesla won't be the winner. But those problems are fundamentally irrelevant until the you've cracked the problem of mass sales.
        justapassenger 7y ago
        Making people want a product isn't enough to get economics to work. They struggle to produce it cheaply enough, at least as of right now. Manufacturing, at scale and within costs is really really hard. Tesla's initial math for cracking the economy was based on full automation of the production, that failed spectacularly. As a result they have a lot of human labor costs they didn't plan for, so problem of optimizing it got even harder. Did Tesla made desirable product? Yes, of course. Can they crack the economy of it? We'll see.
- capsulecorp 7y ago
  I don't think BMW started an EV division to take on the prius though (I could be mistaken). The point being that Tesla is forcing the industry hand to move faster than it would on its own. That isn't to say the Prius didn't have an impact but Tesla carries significantly more weight in catalyzing progress than the Prius.
- ckozlowski 7y ago
  They certainly helped. The 2nd Gen Prius (which was completely redesigned and features the "shuttlepod" shape we're all familiar with today was launched at a time when oil prices were climbing rapidly, peaking in '08. No one remembers the 1st gen model, which coincidentally launched when oil was around an all-time low. But my parents and many others got the 2nd gen, and I recall even more conservative-minded people being quoted as driving the Prius for "national security' reasons. It was a ground breaking car, yes. But it had the benefit of taking advantage of a global price spike in oil.
- mtgx 7y ago
  No, Toyota's Prius pushed hybrids. By the time it wanted to push pure EVs, Tesla was a much more established EV brand. Same with the electric RAV4, which I believe was the first EV in the past 20 years or so. They made it, and then barely changed anything at all to it 20 years later. Toyota doesn't care about EVs and never did, even when it struck them in the face.
tomjakubowski 7y ago
This idea that Tesla dragged everyone else "kicking and screaming" into the electric era idea is nonsense. Nissan was shipping Leaf models in the tens of thousands a year when Tesla was still producing just a few hundred Roadsters.
- spurmboy 7y ago
  No, actually you are wrong! I’ve been an ev freak for a long time. Lots of people made EVs. Are you going to say next that Tesla didn’t do anything because karma was making evs as well ten years ago? Tesla absolutely did drag everyone else kicking and screaming, besides Nissan and some others. Tesla was the first company to make a serious ev that looked like a normal car and claimed to be like a normal car, not some niche golf cart like the leaf. Tesla was the first one to encroach on ice territory in this way, and everyone hated them for it. The other car companies hated them, the New York Times hated them and wrote false stories about the model s, even top gear got in on the action and staged a battery failure on their review of the roadster. Gawker maintained a death watch on Tesla. People in general loved to hate Tesla. I remember very clearly because as a Tesla “fan boy” in 2010 I didn’t make very many friends to say the very least. To EV people who were watching all this happen a decade ago, and there weren’t many of us back then, the overwhelming consensus was that Tesla was the only one pushing things forward and they got enormous pushback from every other entity in the automotive industry as a whole besides a few people. Nissan was not pushing things forward. They made a golf cart that looked like an insect. They showed no signs of making a real sedan like Tesla. They didn’t build charging infrastructure. I’m sorry man but you are flat out wrong. Go ahead and call me fanboy, it won’t make you any less wrong.
  - evanweaver 7y ago
    As someone who has owned both the Leaf and the Model S I agree with this. The only value of the Leaf was it was a very inexpensive but embarrassing way to get a carpool lane sticker in the Bay Area. It could not drive at highway speed for any material distance so “commuter’s golf cart” is accurate. But now the Model S is the best sedan on the road at any price, and I’ve driven the 2019 BMWs and others. The interiors are cluttered up with incoherent “luxury” features to try to justify the price point, but nothing works that well together except for the drivetrain itself. I don’t want a crystal shifter knob and eight different buttons to lower the rear seats and a head-up display that occasionally knows the speed limit and iPads protruding from the seat backs and a lane-keeping feature that randomly jerks the wheel. This stuff makes the retracting door handles on the Tesla seem almost practical. I do want a car that drives great and looks great and minimizes maintenance and running costs. No ICE drivetrain can deliver the same acceleration thrill as the Tesla drivetrain, so what’s the point? The only thing left is range and hauling power, so pickup trucks, vans, and for now, SUVs.
devnonymous 7y ago
I'm just going to leave this here : http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/223/electric-car-timeline.html http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/223/electric-car-timeline.html Research more about the 1997-2000 period mentioned there. Sure Tesla had a part to play in the adoption of EVs but it is more about existing at the right time and bringing on the right (for the business) ceo than about any special vision.
carlsborg 7y ago
To some extent true, but Bmw i8 phev was available for delivery 2014. Bmw i3 in late 2013. Model S deliveries began in mid 2012.
- FullyFunctional 7y ago
  Everything began with the Tesla Roadster showing that you could build an attractive all-electric car. That was in 2008. There is no way anyone could seriously claim that was an evolution of the hybrid lackluster NiMH Toyota Prius. ADD: what actually begat the Roadster was AC Propulsion’s 2003 Tzero [1], a company which can be traced back to the famous EV1 (of “Who Killed The Electric Car”). [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_Propulsion_tzero https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_Propulsion_tzero
  - techslave 7y ago
    > Everything began with the Tesla Roadster showing that you could build an attractive all-electric car. no. the car mfrs already knew you could build such a thing. the reason they didn’t is they had no reason to build a loss leader product.
    - FullyFunctional 7y ago
      And thus Tesla created the reason
draw_down 7y ago
Mmm, forgive me if I don't agree that Tesla is suffering from a lack of praise.
adrianN 7y ago
I think the old car companies would have happily ignored Tesla for way longer, had China not started demanding that a good chunk of new cars sold have to be electric. It's fear for the Chinese market that really drives drives the incumbents to EVs.

theredbox 7y ago

The EV is the new iphone and everyone is struggling to create the next android.

lowdose 7y ago
I would love to see the boardroom cameras of competitors viewing Elon Musks explanation of their data aggregator ml setup in the whole deployed tesla fleet of 400.000 vehicles during autonomous car day.
- Fins 7y ago
  Most of them look down on actively killing their customers. How did that full-self-driving trip across the US in 2016 go?
  - dang 7y ago
    Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
r00fus 7y ago
This is a very interesting analogy, with Musk:Jobs and Tesla:Apple Back in the mid 00s, everyone thought the next big think looked like a smaller PC (analogy: EV cars) or a souped up phone (analogy: EV bikes/scooters). The iPhone changed the game (with Android quickly cementing that change). What happens when it's more convenient to charge or have an EV-as-service than gas-up or get a cab/uber? The automobile industry is due for a massive shakeup and the more efficient batteries and more widespread chargers get, the more likely that the future cuts out the petroleum economy.
- FullyFunctional 7y ago
  It’s been more convenient to charge than pump gas since the original Roadster, but inertia is real. However Tesla single handedly created this industry and adoption have been pretty good IMO. Norway [1] is proof that the only thing holding back good EVs is price and that’s largely about the battery. [1] incentives mades Tesla far more affordable about over 50% of ALL cars sold were Teslas (last year?)

high_derivative 7y ago

The corrosive effect of misallocated inherited wealth. For context, BMW's biggest shareholders are the Quandt/Klatten family. Through the entire supply chain, hundreds of thousands of jobs and massive impact on the wider economy, electrification, competitive effects in the energy market, and climate change, all depending on a handful of people. People who (in this particular context) have no particular motivation for..really anything, with virtually infinite inherited wealth. Especially not to rock the boat or drive any vision forward. That, in a nutshell, is why Germany's car industry is dying long-term. VW ownership same thing via Porsche SE. I find this incredibly interesting, how entire economies ultimately lag and long-term may fail on the bottleneck of a few randomly selected people. Interestingly, there seems to be no good way out because disowning individuals for the collective good is a path that historically does not tend to work well for innovation either.

theredbox 7y ago
That could be said about anything really. The Chinese companies will inevitably fail because they will never venture outside of china in any meaningful way that would be sustainable for them. The Zaibatsus will fail because of aging population and traditionalism. The Chaebols will fail because of archaic hierarchy of the korean society.
- high_derivative 7y ago
  I am sorry but I am not following. What can be said about anything? That it will fail for some reason? Fine, but what does that have to do with the particular point of the ownership structures of German car makers?
  - theredbox 7y ago
    They way i understood your comment is that the german car makers will fail because of inherited wealth. I am saying all of them can fail due to cultural differences. It just happens that the american can do attitude works the best and is global or tries to be global.
  - 7y ago

InTheArena 7y ago

There has been a cultural war inside of BMW for quite a while. Klaus Fröhlich, a board member and executive at BMW actually called EVS overhyped the same week that BMW unveiled their current planning around EVs. Most reviews have the Tesla Model 3 performance outperforming the similarly priced M3. Many have the LR Tesla model 3 as competitive to sometimes beating the BMW 3 series. The sales success at Tesla has come partially at the cost of BMW car sales.

Gibbon1 7y ago
I vaguely remember seeing market share numbers about 5 years ago and it looked like Tesla was clawing away a lot of it's market share in the US from BMW. I think the US market is only a smaller but profitable part of BMW's business. But that should have been worrying.
- adventured 7y ago
  > I think the US market is only a smaller but profitable part of BMW's business. The US is the second largest single market for BMWs, behind China (China buys nearly twice as many BMWs as the US market now). It's about 14% of their total group unit volume (~350k out of ~2.5m). It's a similar number for Mercedes. For Porsche the US is about 20% of their sales. In 1995 they sold 95,000 BMWs in the US. By 2007 that was up to 293,000. They haven't seen a huge collapse in units sold in the US (10%-12% or so), however I think the slide backwards and continued rise of Tesla is obviously very concerning as a threat. They know they have to do something right now.
CPLX 7y ago
They may be competitive in some performance metrics, which of course does matter, but Teslas aren’t even remotely in the same league when it comes to fit and finish. Teslas feel cheap and poorly made. The offerings have some pretty stark differences.
- sabareesh 7y ago
  I see people online complain about fit and finish, but not sure the credibility of people like you. I own a model 3 and there is 0 issues, if you go and do a test drive then there is 80 % chance you will end up buying it if you are in the market

dependsontheq 7y ago

The car industry has seen EVs only as compliance vehicles, sell 10% electric and you just reduced your total fleet emissions by 10%. So you might be able to stay in the business of heavy ICE luxury cars. That’s why their marketing and sales sucked there was a defined number of these to be sold and not more. Now the game is changing and the wind is turning but it’s not Tesla driving the change, it’s good old regulation. And it has always been regulation, the actors are California, China and the EU. Several countries have now decided on a defined year when the last ICE is going to be sold so the future market is already shrinking and other countries will follow. There will be no market left. Regulation.

a_random_name 7y ago
This is exactly what happened with incandescent light bulbs. The price for led bulbs dropped very quickly onve there was economy of scale driven by garunteed demand.
- yyyk 7y ago
  By comparison, CFLs also increased marketshare after the ban but quickly lost most of it to LED bulbs - regulation can't help if the product is poor compared to alternatives.
Gibbon1 7y ago
Well will point out that Tesla has been eating BWM's lunch in the mid range luxo car market. That BWM hasn't been taking that seriously is a sign current management needs to leave.
- eganist 7y ago
  Worse, BMW thought they were in a comfortable position to exploit their customer base for money -- cutting back on their maintenance program, warranties, etc. and banking on people to not care. If anything, BMW was driving people away from themselves faster than customers were already fleeing to e.g. Tesla or, more recently, Audi (e-tron), Jag (i-pace) and Mercedes (EQC) for electrics.

jfoster 7y ago

They should hire Elon.

B1FF_PSUVM 7y ago
The way Apple hired Jobs by buying NeXT? I don't think BMW (privately held) can raise the cash to buy Tesla, unless the stock really tanks. It was more expensive than Ford a while ago. P.S. And then the "culture fit" would be more fun than a barrel of monkeys - probably break the internet a few times ...
- cr0sh 7y ago
  > The way Apple hired Jobs by buying NeXT? Not really a good comparison, since Jobs founded Apple, then left, then went back (can't recall if they begged for him back, or if he just barrelled in).

InTheArena 7y ago

It's well worth watching Doug Demuro's review of both the BMW i3 and the Tesla model 3. It will give you a quick understanding of why BMW is behind the 8 ball right now with regard to EVs.

teachrdan 7y ago
Can someone who knows cars tell me how valuable Doug Demuro's analysis is? I appreciate him as an entertainer but have no way to determine if what he's saying about the cars he reviews is accurate and/or useful.
- iagovar 7y ago
  Not really much value. You don't have to be an expert, he's not definitely from the field and his analysis are not really much deep. That doesn't mean that he's a cool entertainer and his info is also useful.
  - turbo_fart_box 7y ago
    What are your qualifications that allow you to justify a clear dismissal of someone whose job is reviewing and understanding cars?
- manigandham 7y ago
  His videos are more about the "quirks and features" as he describes, rather than an in-depth analysis of the model history, its driving dynamics, and the overall engineering. He's not a race or performance driver and doesn't have the same track experience, and only spends a short time with the car (often just a day or two) so doesn't really have a long-term perspective on it. The videos are a great and fun overview of all the little details that you might not know unless you're an owner, but it serves better as an addon to a more thorough review elsewhere of the actual driving technology and experience. SavageGeese, Remove Before Race, Carfection are good channels to follow.
  - majormajor 7y ago

AcerbicZero 7y ago

I'd prefer they quit prior to gutting the M division and turning their motorsport legacy into mass market trash. Even the M2 is overweight, overpriced, and underwhelming, though its the "best" M branded car made in the past ~10 years.

ardit33 7y ago
Their new M8 "performance grand tourer" weights almost as much as a Ford F-150 Truck.... not kidding
- rys 7y ago
  You've said that repeatedly in the thread so I looked it up, and like everything it just depends. Dry weight for some F-150 configs is actually sightly less than an M8, but some configs (like the Raptor) weigh significantly more.
frankchn 7y ago
BMW ultimately is in the business of selling cars, not preserving a brand legacy. All the German brands are doing the same — AMG and S aren’t what they once were. Even Porsche GT cars are more pliant and daily-able than ever.
vl 7y ago
M2 Competition, while overpriced (like all BMWs), is universally beloved by owners.

Zenst 7y ago

VW CEO stepped down after the emissions scandal :- https://www.evo.co.uk/volkswagen/16715/martin-winterkorn-steps-down-as-volkswagen-ceo-in-wake-of-emissions-scandal https://www.evo.co.uk/volkswagen/16715/martin-winterkorn-ste... BMW also got fined and caught up in doing the same emissions scandal :- https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/car-emissions-scandal-bmw-volkswagen-daimler-charge-eu-a8856806.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/car-emission... Yet it took this for the BMW CEO to step aside!

Thorrez 7y ago
>BMW also got fined and caught up in doing the same emissions scandal : That seems quite different from what VW did. VW made it so emissions were good during testing but bad during regular driving. That article says BMW (and others) colluded to make emissions bad all the time. When emissions are bad all the time, the testers are not being fooled about how the emissions actually look.
superpermutat0r 7y ago
Stepping aside is the finest display of lack of skin in the game. Something fails, you can just leave, while not returning any of the bonuses you "earned" for your "finest" work.
- Zenst 7y ago
  Maybe and the point about bonuses is so sadly true, but then they are never negative when things fail, maybe they need to swing both ways in such positions and install a truer sense of accountability. Perhaps another way of implementing that would be that bonuses are held in escrow for a number of years, the employee is allowed to get interest free loans against those escrow bonuses up to a point perhaps, yet those bonuses will equally be open to adjusting for bad years. Which reminds me of the reinsurance industry and names, those who invest. Even when they leave, they are still liable for future claims for a number of years, a notice period. That's fair and works.

mwfunk 7y ago

As others have pointed out, BMW has been in the EV market for years now with the i3 and i8. I think where they dropped the ball is that they seemingly didn't want to cannibalize sales of their other vehicles. The i8 is extremely niche and low-volume and can't be much of a factor for them. This left the i3 as their only EV offering. But the i3 is so unlike everything else they make, that they can't build on their appeal to people who already like their cars. That really doesn't build on any of BMW's strengths in the auto industry, in fact it attempts to avoid all of their strengths in the market (German sports luxury vehicles with a lot of history). This it really hard for them to compete with Tesla and other EV makers that are going right for the core of BMW's customer base. I think part of it was that they didn't want to cannibalize themselves, but surely BMW would rather be cannibalized by BMW than eaten by Tesla. They just didn't have the strength to make that move, for whatever reason.

mstade 7y ago
I think there's a lot of insight in this comment. I also believe a lot of customers (current and potential) would really like to buy an EV from an established car maker rather than a new comer, and I believe they really want it to look and feel just like a 3-series, or 5-series, or whatever they're called – not the abomination that is i3. I believe this is what everyone except Tesla understands, and I really don't know but maybe it's exactly for the reasons you lay out: they don't want to cannibalize on the gas guzzler series. But if they don't eat themselves, someone else sure will!
- HiroshiSan 7y ago
  Completely agree with you there, both the i8 and the i3 in my opinion look like electric vehicles you'd read about in a sci-fi novel, but neither are cool or sexy.
  - ryandrake 7y ago
    Honestly the world needs more unique-looking cars. Every 4-door sedan made after 2000 or so looks like the same boring identical “bar of soap with wheels”. With only a few minor differences (headlight and tail light shape, grill, etc. from a large distance only car experts tell any of the major brands apart visually.

ardit33 7y ago

BMW has an overall product problem as well, not just EVs.... their newest cars' outside design is getting stale, and their cars just keep adding weight... They are loosing their 'sporty' pedigree and credibility fast, and turning into another me-too luxury car brand, without a proper identity and/or market distinctiveness.... Their new M8 "performance grand tourer" weights almost as much as a Ford F-150 Truck.... not kidding They can add as many 'sport badges to it', it is still an overweight sedan... The only improvement has been in interiors, where they always lagged. Their quality has actually risen last few years.

pcurve 7y ago
IMHO previous gen BMW models were stale. But all the new ones that came out in the recent 1-2 year have been good, including current gen 3 series. Agree on the interior quality improving, but only because they cost too much corner in previous gen models, including F30, which was an abomination.

paulcarroty 7y ago

"Hello" from Tesla.

izacus 7y ago

The internal politics in these companies has to be brutal - there are 1000+ people divisions not to mention hundreds of subcontracting companies to whom building an EV is an existential threat. Think ICE component engineers, gearbox experts, all the companies producing the parts for those cars... so MANY people that have vested interest into making sure that the corporation doesn't fire them and redirect resources to the EV project. I wonder if those kind of corporations will even be able to change their direction in time.

geff82 7y ago

Karma. One has to see that they recently launched their new X5 that was WAY bigger than the predecessor and they seemed to be quite proud of it. They even launched without a hybrid option (just as they do not offer hybrid with their brand new X2). So building new, fuel guzzling SUVs was their idea to please the shareholders instead of making cars smarter.

frankchn 7y ago
Vehicles getting bigger is a trend in general across all manufacturers and all vehicle categories, from the Toyota Corolla to the Lincoln Navigator. I think the only car I can think of which hasn’t gotten bigger and heavier over the years is the Mazda Miata.

todd8 7y ago

I found the BMW i3 "teardown" by a reverse engineering company Munro & Associates very interesting. The BMW EV i3 is described by them as "without a question of a doubt the most advanced vehicle on the planet ... as revolutionary as the Model-T when it came out". See [1] [1] https://youtu.be/rqiBWfsDTAA https://youtu.be/rqiBWfsDTAA

sabareesh 7y ago
Did you see any of the latest videos where he compares i3, m3 and bolt
patfla 7y ago
That's from January 2015 - much has changed since then.
kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
BMW: We see those Model-T panel gaps and can innovate by making ours twice as wide.

reubenswartz 7y ago

Good. Maybe this will help. I’m not a “car guy”, but I appreciate driving dynamics enough that I special ordered a BMW, picked it up in Munich, drove around Europe, shipped it back and drove it in the states for 12 years. Really nice car. Got to test drive the Model S a few times and was impressed. But it’s expensive, and despite the wonders of the low center of gravity and good balance, it’s heavy. Also got to try a 3-series “E” as a loaner. Turned it in wondering why the %#%* they didn’t just make it all electric, instead of the 11 mile electric range they gave it. I would have bought that car immediately. When the model 3 came out, it seemed faster and slightly cheaper than the most comparable 3 series. Personally, I prefer the Tesla interior to the Bmw. The handling is much better than the S, and with the 3 series handling no longer the focal point, I think the Tesla is more fun to drive, too. Which leaves me scratching my head. I can only conclude that most traditional car companies are run by ICE people who believe in tweaking engines to get more power. They just can’t imagine that electric propulsion is not just an environmental thing, but a better driving experience— instant torque, low center of gravity, great balance— all the stuff that BMW was supposed to be good at.

princeb 7y ago

there's too much talk of tesla. BMW's main benchmark is Daimler and BMW lost the ICE race to them and also the EV lead. Tesla didn't make enough cars to be a threat in the last 4 years. all in all a very incompetent CEO. the only one in BMW history not to have an 8 year mandate.

RickJWagner 7y ago

BMW used to make amazing sports sedans, too. They still have a few compelling products, but largely they've lost their edge. Hopefully this will shake things up.

pentae 7y ago
Have you even seen the M2 Competition?

golover721 7y ago

Honestly BMW lost its way long before electrics. The BMW pedigree was always about the drivability. They were never as “luxurious” as their competitors but they were so much more fun to drive. Somewhere along the way they lost that and became just another luxury car brand.

Ice_cream_suit 7y ago

I am in the target market for a BMW i3. However, I was turned off by the bizarre appearance of the car. I am pretty thick skinned, but would still be thinking that other motorists were laughing their heads off, while I was driving it. Why do manufacturers feel obliged to make new technology cars looks like cheap and nasty toys ?

pentae 7y ago

Meanwhile, the Porsche CEO recently wrote an opinion piece for USA Today where he writes "Porsche thinks you’ll want your next car to be electric" https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/06/17/porsche-predicts-american-consumers-adopt-electric-cars-column/1287505001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/06/17/porsche-pr... And they've been making a lot of noise about their plan to shift their lineup to full electric (not watered down hybrids) for some time now.

hbarka 7y ago

Perhaps the internal combustion engine is the last dying gasp of analog propulsion. Internal fire will be left to rockets.

aetherspawn 7y ago

How did they not see this coming though? Nobody wants an i3 because it’s a stupid looking car with no market edge over I.e. a Tesla And nobody can afford an i8 So they may as well threw their market lead for nothing. They failed to make a practical vehicle, like the electric 3-series sedan that probably everyone wished they made.

fok 7y ago

Remember the first sign in 2016: https://electrek.co/2016/03/07/bmw-ceo-tesla-interview-model-x-hit-head/ https://electrek.co/2016/03/07/bmw-ceo-tesla-interview-model...

kayhi 7y ago

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