Today, BMW is one of the major players in car world, when it comes to hybrid or electric cars. Numbers do not lie: from 200.000 cars, that they are planning to make and sell this year, 100.000 of them are going to be either hybrids or electric ones, with 10.000 alone being made in the whole of September alone. Currently, they have 10 electric or hybrid cars to offer, with four new being reviled in recent car show in Frankfurt: i3s, Concept X7 iPerformance, i Vision Dynamics and Mini Electric Concept.
At the end of this month however, BMW is planning to bring 5 totally new electric cars at the Los Angeles Auto Show, including a brand's brand new 'World premiere" of some kind. On this occasion Harrald Krüger was interviewed by a Canadian website, called Canadian driving.ca, where he pointed out that one of the main reason, why they are able to make so many and different electric cars is that they build every component in-house:
"Not many companies can achieve that. We can react quickly to demands and segments, and the flexibility of our architecture for front- and rear-wheel drive can deliver into several sections."
He also pointed out another crucial fact: manufacturers have to adapt their production line to be able to start production electric cars, while in the same time thinking about how to recycle or reuse those cars and batteries, adapting and investing in new and evolving technologies, particularly those for autonomous driving and connectivity and so on:
"You need a knowledge network to develop a charging standard. Companies cannot afford three or four standards, and customers need to be able to use every available charging station with standardized switches."
Jure Šujica
Photo: Avto magazin