13 ms·

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 wa

• 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.
      • perl4ever 7y ago
        I'm old enough to remember (although I didn't particularly notice it at the time) when headlights were standardized. In fact, I've got a car from the 80s right now, and the (pop-up) headlights are round and say "Sylvania". I don't think that the diversity of headlights is an exception to the rule of cars all looking the same, but rather one instance out of many of designers having far more freedom than they did historically, and so there's a lot more variation in what they produce. Fewer and fewer people are buying sedans, but it's easy to pick a couple to contrast. Take the Ford Fusion and Taurus. The Fusion is all ovals, while the Taurus seems to be made out of chamfered blocks and trapezoids. Or consider the previous generation Hyundai Sonata. The current one is generic looking, I would agree, but the one sold from 2010-2014 looked like no other sedan that I've seen.
        • HiroshiSan 7y ago
          I remember when Kia and Hyundai were known as cheap Korean cars, whoever is in charge of branding has really done a great job turning things around. I especially love the look of the 2019 genesis and the Kia stinger is quite interesting, it feels very American in a way I can't describe when I see one on the road.
          • TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
            Kia Stinger looks American, in my opinion, due to the vents forward and aft of the front wheels; tall blunt nose, high rear with short rear window. It looks a bit like a Mustang.
            • HiroshiSan 7y ago
              I just read that the designer of the stinger was previously designing for Audi, I can see a pretty similar resemblance to the a7 in the rear.
          • taurath 7y ago
            And engineering. I used to think the long warranty was just because it was guaranteed to break, but having gone a decade with friends going through their entire life cycles they’re very sturdy cars. Definitely giving Honda a run for the money.
    • nr152522 7y ago
      I decided on an i8 over the Tesla model S. The driving experience and the interior quality of the i8 was, IMO, superior. It was a close call mind you. I even put down a 4K deposit on the Tesla. I felt the i8 was an £80k car with £30k of tech, whereas the Tesla was a £30k car with £80k tech. As an unexpected bonus, my pregnant wife found it easier to get in and out the i8 compared to standard cars entries :)
      • hn23 7y ago
        You will be out of seats soon...
  • CameronNemo 7y ago
    >everyone except Tesla understands Why do you claim this? Tesla cannot change the fact that they are a newcomer. They can only stand by their vehicles as best they can (which has been difficult for body work, but most mechanical issues can be handled efficiently). Furthermore, the look of Tesla vehicles is 100% optimized for drag efficiency. Most electric car purchasers care about range a lot more than look...
    • mstade 7y ago
      > Why do you claim this? Because they are the only manufacturer of EVs that look and feel mostly like regular cars. It's really that simple. Also, please don't miss the "I believe" part of my statement, I have zero facts to back this up, it's just my opinion. > Furthermore, the look of Tesla vehicles is 100% optimized for drag efficiency. Who cares? I want my car to be 100% optimized for not looking like a deranged design experiment. I want it to look like all the other cars. I, just like most other people, aren't special and don't really care to look that way either.
      • basch 7y ago
        isnt Hyundai competitive now, and they look like cars?
        • erikpukinskis 7y ago
          Yes, but there is no real production so you can’t get one.
      • thefounder 7y ago
        Jaguar makes iPace model now that can compete with Tesla on looks and even beat it on UX
        • webaholic 7y ago
          at what price though?
  • timthorn 7y ago
    The 3-series and 5-series have had electric options (330e & 550e) for some time now.
    • mullingitover 7y ago
      Those are plugin hybrids with pretty anemic all-electric range.
    • dhruvrrp 7y ago
      They both are hybrids so don’t even fall under the same category as electric cars for most people. The bmw website doesn’t even show options for 330e so that seems to be discontinued and for the 530e the electric range is 16 miles, so basically a luxury Prius.
      • timthorn 7y ago
        I don't know where you're based, but I wonder if that's a US perspective? I've been driving a PHEV in the UK for 5 years, and perhaps 50% of my colleagues with EVs also have hybrids (including a couple with the 330e); I've never known anyone say they're not electric cars before. The 330e is still available on the BMW UK website.
        • deleted 7y ago
          [deleted]
      • rhizome 7y ago
        Not sure where the 330e went, but there's going to be a 2020 hybrid X1.
    • mstade 7y ago
      Yeah I don't really consider hybrids EVs to be honest. I want to get off fossil fuels, not have a token battery that barely gets me out of the driveway.
      • timthorn 7y ago
  • evo_9 7y ago
    My abomination i3 is the best car I’ve ever owned. To each there own, I personally think it looks like it came out of Blade Runner and the only real complaint I have is I wish it were AWD and had wider, less bicycle-like tires.
    • Ocerge 7y ago
      I can't provide a source right now, maybe Matt Farah, but I've always heard i3s are of extremely high quality. Perhaps people like to project their range anxiety onto the rest of the vehicle?
      • nvrspyx 7y ago
        I can’t speak for everyone, but it’s not so much the quality that puts me off, it’s the appearance. I personally think it’s ugly and there’s way too much “noise” in its aesthetics, for lack of a better term. But as the previous commenter said, to each their own. I’m sure it’s a fine car. It’s just not the aesthetic I’d go for, especially as far as BMWs go.
        • turk73 7y ago
          I know circuses are pretty much a thing of the past, but the i3 would fit right in at one. I always just figured that people who buy EVs really want everyone else to know it.
      • evo_9 7y ago
        It really is. The entire body is carbon fiber. We had a major hailstorm about a year back and it trashed everyone's car except mine at my office. No damage. I also had a joker run a light and clip my left-rear quarter panel - moving me about 1.5 feet in the process - also no damage. I'm actually leasing mine and plan on buying one used. You can find them for sub-25k and quite honestly it's one of the best values EV-wise you can find.
    • mstade 7y ago
      I’m sure it’s a great car but man it looks terrible, and I’m willing to bet a lot of consumers are just as vain as I am. It is of course just my opinion, and as you say: to each their own. I’m glad you like your car, but if I was to buy an EV I want it to look like a regular car – not like something out of blade runner.
  • kerridge0 7y ago
    It's not an abomination it has some flaws which don't affect me, others that make me compromise a bit (drive more slowly, stop more often), but some reasons I chose it other than it being the only affordable electric car available that met all my requirements, was because of the bmw quality and attention to detail which are also hallmarks of the brand.
• mrkurt 7y ago
  They also had a bunch of employee turnover and haven't done anything interesting with electric cars in ~6 years. The i3 was really good back then, boring now.
  • all_blue_chucks 7y ago
    The i3 was really good in what way? Around here nobody owns one, and it seems BMW has been dumping them into the rental market with the "REACH NOW" program.
    • baybal2 7y ago
      i3 is very expensive, very sophisticatedly engineered, but also very shoddily engineered at the same time. Despite using a full CFRP body, like that of supercars, mass savings were small. It is also heavy because of tons of German luxury features that should have no place in an entry level vehicle. It was also generically marketed on being "sporty" and "fun" to drive, while being one of the more morbid EV around, much like Chinese entry level EVs. The design suffers from usage of enormous amount of unique, custom made parts and materials. Basically it is an EV equivalent of Suzuki Mehran on performance and feel, but painted over to make it fit the "New Type Luxury EV" marketing concept.
      • flavoie 7y ago
        Highly disagree about performance. I find it more fun to drive than my 2011 305Hp mustang. No lag, always full torque.
        • baybal2 7y ago
          > No lag, always full torque. Just like any EV, but without ludicrous acceleration of top tier EVs, or just that of average sport car. And despite being an RWD car, it turns and handles the road not much better than FWD econoboxes, which means no actual motorsport person was involved in its design.
    • flavoie 7y ago
• ScalaFan 7y ago
  Borders Bookstore didn't want to cannibalize sales either and they don't exist anymore.
  • dredmorbius 7y ago
    Citation? AFAIU Borders succumbed more to overexpansion and debt than legacy-protection. See: https://www.npr.org/2011/07/19/138514209/why-borders-failed-while-barnes-and-noble-survived https://www.npr.org/2011/07/19/138514209/why-borders-failed-... http://business.time.com/2011/07/19/5-reasons-borders-went-out-of-business-and-what-will-take-its-place/ http://business.time.com/2011/07/19/5-reasons-borders-went-o...
    • adventured 7y ago
      It's not a coincidence that Borders, Waldenbooks, Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble all got, essentially, decimated in the same era that saw the rise of Amazon and its Kindle. Waldenbooks had been around since 1933. Books-A-Million dates to 1917. Borders to 1971. Barnes & Noble has been around in some form for ~150 years. It wasn't overexpansion and debt that destroyed them all (yes, some are still standing in a straggling-on-zombie sort of way).
      • dredmorbius 7y ago
        That is not the same as saying cannibalisation-aversion killed the firm. I'm aware the industry has seen shifts.
• hevi_jos 7y ago
  It is not just the market, it is the people and infrastructure too. Think about that for a moment, you are trained as a mechanical engineer. You know about motors, transmissions and all the complexity involved in creating a combustion engine car, like handling fluids, pumps and so on. Now, you are going to take a decision that destroys engines, your new cars are not going to have engines. Transmissions are extremely simple or do not exist. The entire car does not need to resist the forces of the engine and transmission. No pumps and brakes last the entire life of the car. This means mechanical engineers are not needed, and you already have them. Under German law, it is extremely difficult to let them go, and they are your pals,btw. The infrastructure of cars is extremely expensive, several 1000s millions of dollars per plant. This is amortized in decades. If you buy a thousand lathes that make pieces for 20 years and after 10 years demand for those pieces disappear... your lathes cost at least double. But the most important thing: Germany is good making mechanical things, but not the leader in batteries or electronics, Japan, US, Taiwan and China are.
  • mikedh 7y ago
    Electric cars still require mechanical engineers, and probably a similar number of them to an IC car. Except for the engine itself, most things are not engineered in-house, suppliers like Bosch/ZF/etc provide components to specs.
    • systemBuilder 7y ago
      Most car companies today are really engine companies. They stamp and weld the bodies and build the engines and everything else is out sourced. EVERYTHING ELSE! So the original commenter is correct they would have to lay off half their people to convert to electric motors.
      • cheerlessbog 7y ago
        In what business is the opportunity to reduce payroll a disincentive to investment? At worst they can be paid to retire.
  • 7y ago
• kjhughes 7y ago
  > They just didn't have the strength to make that move, for whatever reason. The reason is well known: BMW has been too focused on sustaining innovations extending their current strengths than disruptive innovation that will eventually displace them -- classic Clayton Christensen: Christensen, Clayton M. The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1997. http://claytonchristensen.com/key-concepts/ http://claytonchristensen.com/key-concepts/
  • windexh8er 7y ago
    Exactly this. It seems to be a natural cycle in most industries where there comes out a viable disrupter. Newcomer comes in to lead the pack in a differentiated part of a given market. They lead for years and displace their existing counterparts who fail to pivot for the sake of short term profit. "How can we risk X number of quarters or even years to sink profits back into R&D to become better and compete for years to come? What about next quarter?". The message is always the same from the incumbent side: they claim they're not concerned as new tech is a niche, then they realize the miss and spread FUD, and then they half ass enter to see if anyone's paying attention but the product still isn't near their competitor. I saw this first hand in the firewall market starting back in 2012ish. Palo Alto Networks came to the plate with a fundamental shift. "Safely enable applications" was one of their original selling tactics. This went against other firewalls that were playing whack-a-mole with ports and IPs, where PAN was focusing on applications (App-ID). The founder, Nir Zuk, even made fun of his competitors (he had a very public rivalry with Gil Shwed, CEO of Checkpoint) by using "Innovators Dilemma" to showcase their failures to innovate based on the fact that they had a huge customer base they didn't want to disrupt, again in the name of quartely earnings and appeasing Wall Street. Fast forward 7+ years and PAN has eaten it's competition, but hasn't innovated in 4+ years. Now the company just buys up competition preemptively and will eventually realize the same fate Checkpoint did. Nir has fallen victim to his own hypocrisy. Successful? For sure. But that doesn't change the reality of their focus today (profit) vs earlier (R&D). I think these cycles are natural and likely good for innovation within industries. Will BMW survive? Most likely. But over the next couple of decades they may be forced to reinvent, and as the article states they may be behind the rest of the pack playing catch-up due to the debt of not moving early and ignoring the intrinsic market signals.
• taf2 7y ago
  sorry but the i8 is not what i'd consider an ev being a hybrid only... from: https://www.bmwusa.com/vehicles/bmwi/bmw-i8.html https://www.bmwusa.com/vehicles/bmwi/bmw-i8.html? "With the electric motor and combustion engine providing a total output of 369hp and 420 lb-ft of torque, the i8 Coupe and i8 Roadster more than live up to the sporting heritage of BMW – blowing through 0-60mph in as little as 4.2 seconds." so it's also not particularly fast either... considering a non performance tesla model s with 4+ seats does 4.0s and is really an ev... so the i8 is more of a gas car... this IMO is why it didn't sell very well either. It's not an ev and it's not that fast compared to a tesla that it was trying to position itself against...
  • mwfunk 7y ago
    Thank you, you're correct! TIL. I thought the i8 was an EV, I had no idea it was just another hybrid. I'm sure it's an engineering marvel, and it's really pretty IMO, but not being a pure EV makes it significantly less appealing to me. I mistakenly thought all of the i* vehicles were EVs. I'm that much more disappointed in BMW now. I am a long time fan of BMW and am in the market for a new car and really wish they offered an EV equivalent to the M3.
    • taf2 7y ago
      I was a bmw fan but now tesla. If you haven’t test driven one they are amazing.
• jdlshore 7y ago
  This is classic Innovator's Dilemma behavior.
• Theodores 7y ago
  I think we are reading too much into the EV aspect of the story. At the end of the day it is all about making money. BMW are not so good at that these days. China has not been the gravy train that it looked to be and the anticipated sales growth in the world's largest car market has failed to materialise. Sad considering the lengths that BMW have gone to with the big nostrils on their models. BMW fans still like the product however fast, rear-wheel drive saloon cars are a dying segment of the market. The once invincible three series is just not as common on the roads as it used to be. Making SUV models in North America is a good idea for Americans insatiable desire to buy European brand vehicles and Americans desires to buy SUVs. But, no offence to American labour or supply chains, it is a bit of a final assembly screwdriver operation. The engines and plenty else comes from Germany. Some components did make it over to South Carolina but you can't say the plant is a charitable effort to hire U.S. workers or a means of tapping into U.S. automotive worker skills, it is a money making machine that gets around tariffs, Chicken Tax or not. BMW EV cars are not strictly about being EV. The electric bits come from Bosch, the same Bosch that supply every other EV maker apart from Tesla. You just buy those bits. What BMW did and is quite commendable is carbon fibre. They are the only mass market manufacturer making passenger cells in carbon fibre. They went into it big time with the i3 and i8. What is also interesting about BMW is how they are owned. Most auto manufacturers are owned by the banks. They don't really own their stuff any more than a mortgage owner owns their own house. They are paying interest. To the banks. BMW are different, they own all their own stuff and don't owe the banks. This is quite admirable. For automakers like BMW the EV market is to them what the vegetarian market is to McDonalds. Sure we should all stop eating meat and save the planet but that ain't gonna happen. Falling sales in burgers, now that is a real problem. Same with ICE cars for the likes of BMW.
• ransom1538 7y ago
  All BMW had to do was put an electric engine in a 3 series body. Nope. Couldn't do it. Instead, they ditched their history, customer base and treated the EV market as a total joke: i3.
  • cheerlessbog 7y ago
    My i3 is the best car I ever owned.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• cattlefarmer 7y ago
  Jeremy Clarkson's surprisingly positive review[0] of the i8 made me want to take a second look at it, which I did. It was just as nice and pleasant as JC said it'd be, but there were two problems. It was twice the price of an M3/M4. 20 million yen for the i8 versus 10million for a top of the line M3 or M4. Prices in Japan for foreign makes are already marked up, because they're perceived as a luxury good. The i8 was marked up even more. At that price, I'd rather get an Aston. Next one is a subjective thing, it's looks are a bit too flashy doesn't it? Nice thing about the M cars (and Teslas), they blend in. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk8p2R6trfE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk8p2R6trfE
• dasbo 7y ago
  There are many factors at play here. Technology: BMW's bet was on lightweight materials and less on battery technology as an enabler for ecological, electric vehicles. Production is still costly and more complex than for e.g. the 3 series. Currently, there is only one plant that is equipped with the necessary manufacturing capabilities (Leipzig). Manufacturing: You need to adapt the assembly lines, which is not as trivial as it may sound. BMW's future platforms will allow assembly of EV's along ICE's on the same belts! At that point, you can produce EVs in all of BMW's plants (... with some modifications) Financial: BMW is not really making money with the i3, production is too costly. Given that BMW is a public company, you don't want to mass produce a product that eats your profit. Try to explain that to "traditional" shareholders that like their dividends. TSLA is an entirely different stock, which can do what it does due to its growth story. Also: Plants cost a lot of money build and operate. Stopping the production in a plant for a while to remodel it for a different assembly process as well (... not to mention the retraining of all the workers, new logistical processes). The magnitude is somewhere in the million dollars per day. Human factors: In German labor law, you can't just fire people. Giving up on ICEs means that you have a lot of people that are not qualified for alternative technologies and need to be retrained. This does not happen in days or weeks - at the scale of BMW this takes years and of course is happening. Sourcing: You need to source all the materials, incl. batterie. My guess is that BMW wanted to work with established players that know car manufacturing. However, that was probably a mistake given that e.g. BOSCH decided to quit (https://electrek.co/2018/02/28/bosch-gives-up-battery-cell-production-electric-car/ https://electrek.co/2018/02/28/bosch-gives-up-battery-cell-p...) Shareholders: We had the topic before, but BMW is special here that the Quandt family owns roughly 46% of BMW. Accordingly they have a major influence on all decisions at BMW. They act definitely not like an Elon Musk - they are very cautious and strategic. They also seem to act labor friendly and have a positive impact on the work conditions at BMW (... again meaning that they will make sure that BMW doesn't have to let go a lot of people).
• nojvek 7y ago
  it's the standard innovators dilemma isn't it. They're making X amount of money, to go full into EV space, they'll make less than X amount of money temporarily while they they ramp up EVs. Yes, it's a risk but somewhat a validated one. But they will cannibalize themselves as they move to new space. Most businesses never want to make a step that makes them less money, it has to be growth, growth, growth at any cost. This is why startups win, because they make less than X money, and can afford to chose different paths to slowly move up. Big Corps are notoriously afraid of choosing paths that cannibalizes their main business. Barnes & Noble, Kodak, Yahoo, Blockbuster - Got killed by that sort of thinking.
• sunstone 7y ago
  Yes this seems right and this won't be last automotive executive who makes this mistake.