It's going to build more battery models, but an exec says electrification is "overhyped"
https://driving.ca/bmw/auto-news/new...es-for-another
BMW may be heavily investing in electric vehicles, but it expects to continue building petroleum-fueled engines, with diesel lasting at least 20 years and gasoline another decade after that.
Speaking with Automotive News Europe, Klaus Fröhlich, BMW Group board member of development, said even with battery-electric and plug-in hybrids, he expects at least 80 per cent of the company’s vehicles will still have an internal combustion engine by 2025.
A “best assumption” would be just 30 per cent electrified sales by 2025, Fröhlich added.
“We see areas without a recharging infrastructure, such as Russia, the Middle East, and the western internal part of China, so they will rely on gasoline engines for another 10 to 15 years,” Fröhlich told the magazine. He said the coastal part of China, and cities like Beijing and Shanghai, will be battery-electric in about ten years, while Europe is more likely to embrace plug-in hybrids.
In the U.S., he expects battery-electrics to sell mainly on the west coast and in parts of the east coast, but they will not become mainstream vehicles. In order to create emissions credits for environmental regulations, the company will most likely offer sportier, more powerful BMW M plug-in hybrids to American (and no doubt Canadian) customers.
Fröhlich told Automotive News Europe that “the shift to electrification is overhyped,” and that battery-electric vehicles “cost more in terms of raw materials for batteries. This will continue and could eventually worsen, as demand for these raw materials increases.”
BMW will abandon a 1.5-L three-cylinder diesel it sells in Europe because it’s too costly to engineer it to comply with tightening emissions standards. Fröhlich also said the company won’t design a successor to the six-cylinder, 400-horsepower diesel in the 750d, since it’s too pricey and complicated to build due to its four turbochargers.
The automaker will continue to engineer four- and six-cylinder diesels, but with no more than three turbochargers. It’s working on a business case to continue its eight-cylinder gasoline engines, but will eventually drop its V12, which only sells about 5,000 copies per year globally — including at Rolls-Royce — and which has to be regularly updated to meet new emissions standards, especially in China.