The i3 was such a great city car, well ahead of its time. Such a shame that they have apparently abandoned the EV design ethos embodied in that car (and that car alone) in favour of bloated luxo-barges. Tell me that your EV strategy is about brand greenwashing without telling me it’s about brand greenwashing.
They seem to be really focused on chasing the Boomer demographic. I’m a happy former customer (twice over) but wouldn’t consider anything in their EV range - which means I wouldn’t consider buying a BMW again at all unless there’s some sort of radical strategic change.
i3 was a fascinating car and remains one of the best used cars currently available, but it had 2 bets that BMW lost badly.
1) That batteries would remain really expensive. Lithium batteries have been falling in price for a long time and EV demand was only going to drive new innovations and economies of scale, so even at the time that seemed like a poor bet. BMW wasn't entirely wrong since battery prices stayed quite high during the model lifespan, but it didn't really matter because bet 1) lead to bet 2)
2) Carbon Fibre construction. BMW bet that EVs would need to be light to extract range from small batteries, so they made a CFRP monocoque and made a wager they could find ways to manufacture CFRP at scale more cheaply. They were pretty wrong (though it has led to an explosion of carbon fibre trim options on M models that is nearly pure profit)
i3 had such a small battery, but it still had the huge EV cost penalty that made early EVs very niche. That proved pretty fatal, though the few that got one did tend to really like them.
That double failure scared BMW pretty badly and they retreated to shared platforms, so every EV they sell can't take advantage of the packaging benefits being an EV allows. There are huge spaces for engines up front that is nearly all wasted.
Despite that deficiency BMW has invested a ton into their EV powertrains, so they actually have some of the best efficiency out there.
BMW has not abandoned it. i3 was a cool cheap car, with a carbon fiber cell. It was ugly as hell, but cool tech.
BMW platforms now are both for ICE and EV, but "Neue klasse" that will start to arrive soon is a from-scratch, new, electric only platform. That will really make the cars more spacious. The sportiest platform is supposedly architected for 1350 hp, so it will be interesting to see if BMW will take up the lap time fight with Porsche. That would be interesting.
Many (not all, obviously) boomers will never buy an EV because of identity politics in the midwestern United States. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is true elsewhere as well.
Why they’re not pumping out $25k 250 mile range city cars for millenials and gen z is a mystery to me.
In Europe the Dacia Spring is available for under €20k on the road, and it is a proper car similar to others in the compact range - not a toy like the Citroen Ami (that thing doesn't even have heating). However it's really the only car like that available in Europe, and Dacia isn't exactly known for it's reliability (sorry Romania).
Plus at that price point they are not competing with other compacts - which aren't that popular anyway - but with a 2-4 year old used car. One of my collegues just bought a 4 year old Toyota Avensis for the same price. Which one do you think will last longer?
The same reason why the industry pushed away from the sedan and onto larger SUVs: profit margins. The Chevy Bolt was very close to what you described and was cancelled (brought back, but cancelling it was a momentum killer)
In most of Europe, at least, the “producing lots of CO2 is good, actually” thing popular on the US right is just not a significant factor in mainstream politics. In practice, looked at globally, it’s mostly only a thing in big fossil fuel producers; the stats on global warming denial in particular are very stark, with the US and Australia _way_ out ahead of the rest of the developed world.
They seem to be really focused on chasing the Boomer demographic. I’m a happy former customer (twice over) but wouldn’t consider anything in their EV range - which means I wouldn’t consider buying a BMW again at all unless there’s some sort of radical strategic change.