2005 Bmw Z4 3.0i Convertible 2-door 3.0l on 2040-cars

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Senior VP Hildegard Wortmann says BMW's electric journey is just beginning

Anyone who questions BMW's effort or sincerity on electrified vehicles should have a chat with Hildegard Wortmann, the German automaker's senior vice president over product management for automobiles and aftersales. I was fortunate to do just that at the Detroit North American International Auto Show earlier this year. ABG: Where might BMW go with electrified vehicles beyond your i3 urban EV and i8 high-performance hybrid sports car? "That [regulatory] train has left the station" - Hildegard Wortmann HW: I think a big advantage is that we now have two bookends: BMW i [green] and BMW M [high performance]. We can use those bookends to foster the BMW brand in total. Are electrified vehicles the answer to CAFE and European regulations? Is that the future? We don't know, but that [regulatory] train has left the station. To achieve all of these regulations worldwide, there is no way to do it without electrification. That is why the activities of BMW i are not just to launch new products. They are our build-up in competence for learning and gaining experience in electrification. We will use those learnings for the total BMW brand. Technology-wise, we now have a really good understanding of what to do, what not to do, how to work with this and how to get a lot of learnings from the infrastructure and everything that goes with it. And depending on how quickly the market takes off, we can scale it and use it across the range. We will use the competence we will have in vehicle electrification for more than just BMW i. There will be other derivatives and electrification of other products. ABG: Do you see BMW offering pure EVs with larger batteries for greater range? HW: That's a big feature of the Tesla. The question is to find the best balance [of range vs. battery size, weight and cost]. On the i3, we tried to have the right balance between how much range customers need for daily driving and how much battery we put in there. The market will show us. We have over a million kilometers driven by consumers in the Mini E and ActiveE and a fairly good understanding that those people are not driving that much. Putting a really big battery with all that weight into a car that is meant for urban mobility does not make sense. ABG: What about extended-range EVs beyond the i3's optional small range extender engine? "This whole EV movement is in its very early stages." HW: This whole EV movement is in its very early stages.

BMW X4 M probably not in the cards

BMW is preparing to exploit its latest market niche - those that find themselves unable to choose between the 3 Series, 4 Series and X3 - with the X4. If you're looking for an M product, though, you'll remain limited to the 3 and 4 Series. BMW's Bernhard Ederer, at the Australian launch of the X5, told Car Advice he wouldn't "bet on it," when asked about a hotter X4.
Oddly, Ederer's reasoning, according to the Aussies, is out of concern for the X6 M, whose sales the X4 M would apparently cannibalize. That's like saying the M3 doesn't make sense because it will cannibalize M5 sales - the logic just doesn't really hold up. "The question is what customers are we talking to? And are we talking to someone that is willing and able to afford [an X6 M]?" Ederer told Car Advice.
Car Advice seems to feel the same way, claiming the X3-based X4 will share its powertrains with its donor platform, and will eventually spawn an M variant, albeit a few years down the line.

BMW predicts US will be biggest i8 market

BMW will be showing a production version of its new i8 plug-in hybrid supercar at the upcoming Frankfurt Motor Show, and while we're quite excited about seeing the company's second i product in the flesh. According to a new report from Automotive News Europe, BMW is expecting its largest markets to be the United States, United Kingdom and Germany. Notable for its absence in that list is everybody's favorite mega-market, China.
Automobilwoche, a German-language publication of Automotive News Europe, spoke with the i8's product manager, Hendrik Wenders, who declared, "The US will be by far the largest sales market for the i8." Wenders stops short of actual mentioning what percentage of i8 sales will be in the US, but does mention that it should arrive in showrooms around the world in about nine months. The simultaneous rollout will occur in 50 different countries.
Check back for our full coverage of the i8's debut at the 2013 Frankfurt Motor Show. If you just can't wait until September, then check out our first drive of the i8 Prototype.