Automotive News Europe - February 2020 - 12

AUTOMOTIVE NEWS EUROPE

AUTOMAKERS

Stand by your plan
To maximize flexibility, BMW re-affirms position against electric-only platform
CHRISTIAAN HETZNER
chetzner@autonews.com

MW's new management team will not
change course and follow MercedesBenz and Audi by developing a dedicated
electric vehicle architecture to better
compete against EV leader Tesla.
CEO Oliver Zipse believes BMW's "integrated" platform, which can underpin
EVs as well as cars with combustion
engines, could be a unique selling point
for customers. Therefore, Zipse plans
to stick with a conservative investment
strategy for EVs that he has carried over
from his predecessor, Harald Krüger.
European carmakers will need to invest
heavily to halve fleet emissions to 59
grams per kilometer by 2030 from a target of 95g/km that takes full effect next
year. A decade from now, BMW expects
every second car it sells in Europe will
either be a plug-in hybrid or a batteryelectric vehicle to meet targets.
"In our view, market forecasts are too
uncertain to warrant inflexible, electroonly platforms," BMW executive Udo
Hänle told Automotive News Europe.
"What we don't want is for our plants to
operate below capacity," added Hänle,
who last month transitioned from his job
as senior vice president of production
strategy to a new role in engineering.
Financially, this approach makes sense
because in the early years of the market's transition to electrified vehicles
factories can quickly adapt to changing
demand for combustion-driven and battery-powered vehicles. "Building a new
plant would cost roughly 1 billion euros,
whereas ramping up existing facilities
to produce battery-electric vehicles will
amount to a three-digit-million-euro investment, mainly for body shop and assembly," Hänle said.
BMW will retain its current strategy of
one architecture for front-wheel-drive
and one for rear-wheel-drive cars. This
common distinction within the combustion engine world is not found on EV-only
platforms. Critics says that BMW's strategy puts a premium on finances over in-

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BMW experimented unsuccessfully with a purpose-built electric vehicle when
the i3 (shown) arrived in 2013. Since then, the German automaker has moved
to flexible architectures.
novation and could lead to uncompetitive products. Hänle argued that won't
be the case at BMW. "We are not going
to compromise on anything that will impact the customer," he said.

Bumpy beginning
BMW already experimented unsuccessfully with a purpose-built electric vehicle
when the i3 arrived in 2013. The automaker says it won't carry over the i3's
costly construction and unique body-onframe layout to subsequent EVs. Last
November Zipse extolled the virtues of
the group's cautious approach, billing it
even as a competitive differentiator. "We
don't believe that is at all necessary [to
have a specialized platform] to achieve
the desired product characteristics,"
said BMW's CEO, who took over in last
August. "Instead you can accomplish
these very well with an intelligent platform that fulfills all the requirements."
Audi parent Volkswagen Group takes a
different view. Engineers can take full
advantage of their freedom to develop
traits unique to Audi's dedicated PPE EV

architecture, including its 800-volt system that lowers weight, saves space and
enables an ultra-fast recharging speed.
Meanwhile Mercedes is developing its
EVA2 platform that will underpin the upcoming EQS sedan.
Using BMW's logic, however, its rivals
shouldn't have bothered with architectures specifically for EVs, especially
because Zipse believes its integrated
platform does not come with trade-offs
such as limited electric range. "It's not
the case that you have to make compromises if you plan long in advance.
I believe the fact that we don't need
a dedicated (EV) platform could be a
unique selling point," he said.
BMW's stance on EV-only architectures
may be short lived, however, because
the European Union aims to break its dependence on imported fossil fuels that
contribute to climate change by going
fully carbon neutral by 2050. To facilitate this, new EU Commission President
Ursula von der Leyen said in December she plans to propose more punitive
2030 fleet emission targets. ANE

FEBRUARY 2020

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Automotive News Europe - February 2020

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