Following in Volvo’s announcement on the 5th July, when the company stated it will only produce cars with an electric motor launched in or after 2019, BMW is the latest manufacturer to reveal electrification plans. The strategy, called NUMBER ONE > NEXT, will begin with a MINI 3-door hatchback and the electrification of BMW’s entire fleet of cars. In practice this means that either a plug-in hybrid or full-electric car will be offered in every range, from 1-Series to 8-Series.
Differing from Volvo’s plans, BMW will keep their petrol-only and diesel-only powered car sales alongside the electrified variants, offering greater consumer choice.
BMW currently offers a healthy range of plugged-in vehicles including the 225xe, 330e, 530e, 730e, i3 and i8. Following the news, the company has confirmed they will add electrified models over the next few years and beyond 2020. In addition, the next generation vehicle architecture will be structured to offer battery-electric vehicles (BEVs).
BMW is openly predicting that by 2025 electrified vehicles will account for between 15-25% of sales, compared to around 1.7% of overall UK sales last year from all manufacturers. They add that this statement is highly dependable on regulation, incentives and charging infrastructure particularly, which may affect this estimate either positively or negatively. Find out more below from the original press release.
Electric MINI
In 2010, BMW conducted trials using a MINI-E car that was rented to some 100 people, in order to learn about how electric vehicles fit into the life’s of ordinary people. The results ultimately translated into the BMW i3, but there was an obvious hankering for an all-electric MINI following the development and popularity of the earlier project.
BMW has today confirmed an all-electric MINI 3-door will be built at Oxford, using an electric drivetrain built in Germany. According to the press release:
The BMW Group announced today that the new battery-electric MINI will be a variant of the brand’s core 3-door Hatch model. This fully electric car will go into production in 2019, increasing the choice of MINI powertrains to include petrol and diesel internal combustion engines, a plug-in hybrid and a battery electric vehicle. The battery electric MINI’s electric drivetrain will be built at the BMW Group’s e-mobility centre at Plants Dingolfing and Landshut in Bavaria before being integrated into the car at Plant Oxford, which is the main production location for the MINI 3-door Hatch.
Electrification is one of the central pillars of the BMW Group’s corporate strategy NUMBER ONE > NEXT and the company has announced that all brands and model series can be electrified, with a full-electric or plug-in hybrid drivetrain being offered in addition to the combustion engine option. Additional electrified models will be brought to market in the coming years and beyond 2020, the company’s next generation vehicle architecture will be structured in order to enable new models also to be offered as a full-electric vehicle.
The BMW Group announced today that the new battery-electric MINI will be a variant of the brand’s core 3-door Hatch model. This fully electric car will go into production in 2019, increasing the choice of MINI powertrains to include petrol and diesel internal combustion engines, a plug-in hybrid and a battery electric vehicle. The battery electric MINI’s electric drivetrain will be built at the BMW Group’s e-mobility centre at Plants Dingolfing and Landshut in Bavaria before being integrated into the car at Plant Oxford, which is the main production location for the MINI 3-door Hatch.
Oliver Zipse, BMW AG Management Board member for Production said, “BMW Group Plants Dingolfing and Landshut play a leading role within our global production network as the company’s global competence centre for electric mobility. Our adaptable production system is innovative and able to react rapidly to changing customer demand. If required, we can increase production of electric drivetrain motor components quickly and efficiently, in line with market developments.”
By 2025, the BMW Group expects electrified vehicles to account for between 15-25% of sales. However, factors such as regulation, incentives and charging infrastructure will play a major role in determining the scale of electrification from market to market. In order to react quickly and appropriately to customer demand, the BMW Group has developed a uniquely flexible system across its global production network. In the future, the BMW Group production system will create structures that enable our production facilities to build models with a combustion engine, plug-in hybrid or fully electric drive train at the same time.
The BMW Group currently produces electrified models at ten plants worldwide; since 2013, all the significant elements of the electric drivetrain for these vehicles come from the company’s plants in Dingolfing and Landshut. Dingolfing additionally builds the plug-in hybrid versions of the BMW 5 Series and the BMW 7 Series and from 2021, it will build the BMW i NEXT. The BMW Group has invested a total of more than 100 million euros in electro-mobility at the Dingolfing site to date, with investment continuing as the BMW Group’s range of electrified vehicles further expands.
Electrification of all brands and model series continues
The new, fully-electric MINI is one of a series of electrified models to be launched by the BMW and MINI brands in the coming years. In 2018, the BMW i8 Roadster will become the newest member of the BMW i family. The all-electric BMW X3 has been announced for 2020, and the BMW iNEXT is due in 2021.
Today, the BMW Group offers the widest range of electrified vehicles of any car manufacturer in the world, with nine models already on the market. These range from the full-electric BMW i3 to the company’s newest electrified model, the MINI Countryman Plug-in Hybrid, which is produced by VDL Nedcar in the Netherlands. The company has committed to selling 100,000 electrified vehicles in 2017 and will have a total of 200,000 electrified vehicles on the roads by the end of the year.
The BMW Group has benefited from its early start on the road to electrification. Indeed, the company’s pioneering, large scale electric vehicle trial began world-wide in 2008 with the MINI E. Learnings from this project played a crucial role in the subsequent development of the BMW i3 and BMW i8, technology pioneers which themselves informed the company’s current range of plug-in hybrid vehicles.
Source; BMW
