BMW Left Behind in Electric Vehicle Racing

MUNICH – Eight years ago, BMW was one of the first major automakers to sell a battery-powered car: i3 It broke new ground with its lightweight carbon fiber body and aluminum chassis.

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

different general engines or VolvoBMW has not set a date to bury the internal combustion engine. different Volkswagenhas not started selling a full line of vehicles designed from the ground up to run on batteries. While other auto executives are optimistic about an electric future, Oliver ZipseThe BMW CEO has criticized the European Union’s plans to ban petrol and diesel engines by 2035.

“I’m a little concerned about BMW,” said Peter Wells, director of the Automotive Industry Research Center at Cardiff Business School in Wales. When it comes to committing to a full lineup of electric vehicles, “they’re pretty undecided,” he said.

The perception that BMW is in an electric vehicle delay helps explain why investors are starting to take a hit on the company’s shares, which fell even after the company reported a healthy quarterly net profit of 4.8 billion euros, or $5.7 billion, this month. BMW shares have lost 18 percent since the beginning of June.

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

“Maybe you haven’t seen that much, but we’re working hard,” said Adrian van Hooydonk, BMW’s design director, in an interview with BMW World, the company’s showcase in Munich.

BMW executives say the iX only shows a commitment to electric propulsion, lagging behind its rivals at the braggadocio level. They are talking about the private research center in Munich, where BMW develops its own battery technology. They point out that BMW is designing a collection of special components that will support a family of electric vehicles from 2025.

BMW exemplifies the difficult calculations that established automakers must make as the industry transitions to electric power. It takes four or five years to design a new car, equip a factory to build it, and organize a supplier network. Auto company executives have to make billion-dollar bets based on their best estimates of what auto buyers will want half a decade from now and what kind of technology will be available.

No one knows what kind of electric vehicles will become popular as the market expands beyond the affluent and environmentally conscious early adopters. Will they want car designs that mark a break with the past? Or will they want electric cars that look and perform like the petrol models they’re used to?

It’s too early to tell. Sales of electric vehicles are growing rapidly, but remain less than 4 percent of the total market in the United States. Tesla dominates the market. factory in Berlin. Tesla’s Model 3 is the best-selling electric car in Western Europe, with plug-in vehicles accounting for 17 percent of new car sales, or one million vehicles, in the first half of the year, according to Schmidt Automotive Research in Berlin.

The i3, which BMW began producing in 2013, has been a lesson in the dangers of hitting the market too soon. The carbon fiber body, mounted on an aluminum chassis, won design awards and was an engineering feat, but was expensive to manufacture. Not many people were willing to pay more than $40,000 for a hatchback that could essentially travel just 80 miles on one charge. Later models have advanced batteries and can go more than 150 miles between charges.

BMW continues to manufacture the i3, and has sold approximately 210,000 since 2013, but ended sales in the United States in July. BMW executives dismiss the notion that the i3 was a mistake, saying they’ve learned valuable lessons about electric vehicle technology, such as how to make more efficient engines. “This wouldn’t have happened without the i3,” said Frank Weber, BMW’s development board member, as he guided a maroon iX through the streets around the company headquarters in Munich.

Mr van Hooydonk said BMW waited eight years to pursue the i3 because executives realized they needed a vehicle that could go more than 600 kilometers, or 370 miles, on a single charge. “With iX, we now have that,” he said.

Unlike Volkswagen and DaimlerBMW, which has established its own battery factories with its partners, purchases batteries from suppliers such as Sweden’s Northvolt and China’s CATL. Like its competitors, BMW is developing its own technology. At a research center in Munich, the automaker is looking for chemical recipes that are safer, lighter, and store more energy per kilogram. Suppliers will manufacture the batteries to BMW specifications.

The centre’s laboratories are equipped with electron microscopes that allow BMW scientists to observe what happens to molecules inside battery cells as they are repeatedly charged and discharged. There is a fireproof room where BMW can work on ways to prevent the batteries from overheating.

BMW even advises its suppliers on how to produce more efficiently. Three objects resembling delicate, machined egg beaters lay on a table at the research center. They were part of a test to see which slurry of graphite was mixed most effectively, which would then be painted onto a thin layer of copper and dried to form the electrodes, which are critical parts of a battery.

“We challenge suppliers,” said Martin Schuster, BMW’s vice president of battery development, as he toured the research center. “Otherwise, we’ll take whatever’s on the shelf.”

Shortly after the iX reaches European dealerships in the fall, BMW will begin selling it. i4A high-performance, battery-powered sedan. As a short test drive in Munich shows, the i4 has the dizzying acceleration that electric power can provide. But the i4 shares components with BMW models with petrol engines, a feature that has attracted critics.

By 2025, BMW’s strategy will be to sell battery power as an option available on all its main models. Initially, most electric BMWs will be adaptations of their internal combustion cousins.

Analysts are skeptical that such conversions could compete with cars designed to be electric from the ground up and able to take full advantage of battery power. Electric cars have smaller engines and transmissions than conventional vehicles, potentially making room for passengers and cargo.

“BMW is transforming a conventional car into an electric vehicle,” said Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, founder of the Center for Automotive Research in Duisburg, Germany. “There will always be compromises.”

In 2025, BMW plans to start building vehicles on a platform that is a collection of components optimized for battery power that can be shared by many different models. This is the year that many analysts believe electric vehicles will be cheaper to buy than petrol models and sales will increase.

If so, BMW’s timing might be perfect.

So far, the market has moved faster than forecast. In Europe, sales of electric vehicles exploded during the pandemic. in the United States, Biden management He backed electric vehicles this month when he announced his plan to increase sales of electric vehicles to 50 percent of new cars by 2030.

Even BMW critics don’t take this into account. “They’re great engineers,” said Mr Wells of Cardiff Business School. “They can if they want to.”