[RPiM5]

So what he is saying is that the V8 will die and the next M5 (G90) will be a hybrid electric with a turbo charged inline 6 cyl engine, making about 600 total horsepower (combined electric batteries and ICE engine) and will get 30% better fuel economy than the F90 M5. But at the same time will have the exhaust note like an F80 M3 and will cost $150,000 with some decent options. I don't think I'm on board with that future.

[tna3]

Originally Posted by SamS

That interview reads like a long list of excuses on why BMW can’t offer a competitive BEV today. And fuel cell hydrogen? Please. Never going to work due to fuel cell size and lack of infrastructure.

I think BMW is underestimating the shift to electrification, and this interview reinforces their “wait and see” strategy.

I don't agree with you. A lack of charging infrastructure even today is obvious. And he makes the point that most people charge at home or work, people who have these luxuries make use of them. It just doesn't scale well. Reality is most businesses are not silicon valley tech companies that offer chargers in their parking lots. Many homes have only 100 amps of service and are limited not only by internal components but also by surrounding street and existing wiring infrastructure that was never meant to scale. Many of which are underground. A single Tesla supercharger itself consumes 80 AMPs right there. And I am only talking about the US. Other parts of the world are far behind. The timelines presented for EV adoption seem reasonable to me if anything even optimistic.

[brad850csi]

There is ongoing talk that JLR will be using the BMW V8 soon after their 5.0 Supercharged is discontinued. I'd imagine with the quantity of V8s that still go into Range Rovers in particular that it should keep the V8 around for another generation of cars yet.

[SamS]

Originally Posted by tna3

I don't agree with you. A lack of charging infrastructure even today is obvious. And he makes the point that most people charge at home or work, people who have these luxuries make use of them. It just doesn't scale well. Reality is most businesses are not silicon valley tech companies that offer chargers in their parking lots. Many homes have only 100 amps of service and are limited not only by internal components but also by surrounding street and existing wiring infrastructure that was never meant to scale. Many of which are underground. A single Tesla supercharger itself consumes 80 AMPs right there. And I am only talking about the US. Other parts of the world are far behind. The timelines presented for EV adoption seem reasonable to me if anything even optimistic.

You disagree, but it sounds like there are some fundamental misconceptions at play here.

1) As said in the article, most people charge at home/work. Everyone's home/work as electricity! Minimum 120V, but often much more. No one will ever have hydrogen, etc. at home or work.

2) Even 100amps of home service is enough to charge a BEV + meeting existing home electrical requirements. A 30A breaker/circuit/outlet works just fine with a $35 adapter that comes with most BEVs and Teslas. If you have more amperage available, a dedicated wall charger can be installed, but a normal "dryer" style outlet can also be used.

3) Tesla "Superchargers" are the equipment found on highways, etc. They are rated to provide 150-250A. The dedicated home "wall charger" you're referring to is purely optional, and typically is configured with a 60A breaker, to provide 48A of charging.

4) Electricity absolutely scales well. Every single new home or building construction in the US can easily and cheaply accommodate the energy infrastructure required to charge a BEV. Existing homes/buildings are too diverse for me to make such a generalization, but anything from a standard 12A/120V outlet to a 30A/240V dryer outlet can support vehicle charging.

[bagekko]

Charging an EV at home on a 30a 120v circuit is not feasible depending on how much you drive daily. Using that would take over 24hrs to charge my current i3 if the battery was near zero. Even using the BMW Turbo Cord on a 30a 220v plug I setup can barely charge it to full overnight as the i3 goes 150 miles some days.

A home with 100a may or may not be able to have a 220v plug for an EV depending on what else is in the house, would prolly trip something if the dryer, oven, and EV were being charged at the same time with all the other juice flowing in the house. Else many homes would have to charge on 120v and that is a frustrating EV future that no one will adopt.

Originally Posted by SamS

2) Even 100amps of home service is enough to charge a BEV + meeting existing home electrical requirements. A 30A breaker/circuit/outlet works just fine with a $35 adapter that comes with most BEVs and Teslas. If you have more amperage available, a dedicated wall charger can be installed, but a normal "dryer" style outlet can also be used.

[SamS]

Originally Posted by bagekko

Even using the BMW Turbo Cord on a 30a 220v plug I setup can barely charge it to full overnight as the i3 goes 150 miles some days.

Using 30A/240V plug, a Tesla Model 3 charges @ 22miles per hour. Plenty for even a 150 mile daily commute.

Agreed that 120V is not a good long-term solution, but it's a viable in a jam.

[ron_jeremy]

Originally Posted by Artemis

Phase-out of fossil fuel vehicles: see here.

Norway have this target set within 2025, only selling electrified vehicles. At this stage we're about 56%.

To me, this interview shows why BMW are behind the game. Selling ICE chassi EV vehicles are a subpar solution.
It's going to be a Worse ice and a worse and less practical EV.
Tesla is going to grow even more. The i-pace is a dedicated EV from the ground up, if a small (and broke) company as Jag can do it, so should BMW, have higher ambition than beeing mediocre damn it!

[SamS]

Originally Posted by ron_jeremy

Norway have this target set within 2025, only selling electrified vehicles. At this stage we're about 56%.

To me, this interview shows why BMW are behind the game. Selling ICE chassi EV vehicles are a subpar solution.
It's going to be a Worse ice and a worse and less practical EV.
Tesla is going to grow even more. The i-pace is a dedicated EV from the ground up, if a small (and broke) company as Jag can do it, so should BMW, have higher ambition than beeing mediocre damn it!

As someone who actually bought one of BMW's ActiveHybrid vehicles, it's my view that hybrids are actually the worst of both worlds. Now that battery tech has advanced to product affordable >200mi range vehicles, and gas is cheap (for now), a hybrid just adds complexity and offers none of the benefits of going gas-free.

Why bother plugging in every night (BMW's strategy) to get only 25 miles of range? You still have to go get gas, change oil, etc. If you're gonna plug in, just plug in and get the full/pure BEV experience.

[///M TOWN]

Originally Posted by ron_jeremy

Norway have this target set within 2025, only selling electrified vehicles. At this stage we're about 56%.

To me, this interview shows why BMW are behind the game. Selling ICE chassi EV vehicles are a subpar solution.
It's going to be a Worse ice and a worse and less practical EV.
Tesla is going to grow even more. The i-pace is a dedicated EV from the ground up, if a small (and broke) company as Jag can do it, so should BMW, have higher ambition than beeing mediocre damn it!

I am very proud of Norway, and their conviction to possitive change.

Companies Like Geely are going to eat a huge peice of this pie.

Like Lee Iacocca said.. "Lead, follow, or get out of the way"

[SamS]

Originally Posted by ///M TOWN

Like Lee Iacocca said.. "Lead, follow, or get out of the way"

And after we read this interview, which of those approaches is BMW taking?

[Artemis]

Originally Posted by SamS

And after we read this interview, which of those approaches is BMW taking?

Some BMW execs could use a pair of glasses to adjust their myopic business eyesight.

For example:

"Kodak Failed By Asking The Wrong Marketing Question
Avi Dan - Jan 23, 2012, 09:59am - source: here
For 40 years, you couldn’t walk through Grand Central Station in New York
 without admiring the Kodak Coloramas. These 18x60 foot photographs showcased the Kodak brand to commuters, highlighting the creativity of great photography in a series of “Kodak moments.” Kodak marketing executives were adept at weaving the brand into the fabric of America for generations. In fact, at its peak, Kodak captured 90% of the US film market and was one of the world’s most valuable brands.
Immensely successful companies can become myopic and product oriented instead of focusing on consumers’ needs. Kodak’s story of failing has its roots in its success, which made it resistant to change. Its insular corporate culture believed that its strength was in its brand and marketing, and it underestimated the threat of digital.
Kodak did not fail because it missed the digital age. It actually invented the first digital camera in 1975. However, instead of marketing the new technology, the company held back for fear of hurting its lucrative film business, even after digital products were reshaping the market.
Unfortunately, the company had the nearsighted view that it was in the film business instead of the story telling business, and it believed that it could protect its massive share of market with its marketing. Kodak thought that its new digital technology would cannibalize its film business. Sony and Canon saw an opening and charged ahead with their digital cameras. When Kodak decided to get in the game it was too late. The company saw its market share decline, as digital imaging became dominant.
This blind faith in marketing’s ability to overcome the threat from the new technology proved fatal. Kodak failed to adapt to a new marketplace and new consumer attitudes.
The essence of marketing is asking first, “what business are we in?” and not “how do we sell more products?” Had early 20th Century railroad executives seen themselves as being in the transportation business rather than the railroad business, or had Hollywood moguls in the 1940s understood that they are in the entertainment business, not just the movie business, their industries wouldn’t have been decimated by air travel and TV shows, respectively.
Kodak made a classic mistake: it didn’t ask the right question. It focused on selling more product, instead of the business that it was in, story telling.
What’s the lesson to other companies on how to avoid Kodak’s fate?
Companies have to adapt to the requirements of the market, even if that means competing with themselves. Technology has the potential to be disruptive of markets and companies, at the same time that it is benefiting consumers. Survival is not a likely strategy in today's marketplace. In this environment, marketers should strive for entrepreneurial greatness and innovation, not to just determine preference among existing options.
Marketing is not the art of selling products, as Kodak thought. Smart marketing is about providing a company’s customer base value satisfaction. In short, marketing is tasked with keeping the company relevant to their customers’ needs. In an age in which the consumer is in charge, approaching marketing from the perspective of products or services alone is not enough to make consumers want to engage."

"Kodak’s Downfall Wasn’t About Technology
Scott D. Anthony - July 15, 2016 - source: see here
A generation ago, a “Kodak moment” meant something that was worth saving and savoring. Today, the term increasingly serves as a corporate bogeyman that warns executives of the need to stand up and respond when disruptive developments encroach on their market. Unfortunately, as time marches on the subtleties of what actually happened to Eastman Kodak are being forgotten, leading executives to draw the wrong conclusions from its struggles.
Given that Kodak’s core business was selling film, it is not hard to see why the last few decades proved challenging. Cameras went digital and then disappeared into cellphones. People went from printing pictures to sharing them online. Sure, people print nostalgic books and holiday cards, but that volume pales in comparison to Kodak’s heyday. The company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012, exited legacy businesses and sold off its patents before re-emerging as a sharply smaller company in 2013. Once one of the most powerful companies in the world, today the company has a market capitalization of less than $1 billion.
Why did this happen?
An easy explanation is myopia. Kodak was so blinded by its success that it completely missed the rise of digital technologies. But that doesn’t square with reality. After all, the first prototype of a digital camera was created in 1975 by Steve Sasson, an engineer working for … Kodak. The camera was as big as a toaster, took 20 seconds to take an image, had low quality, and required complicated connections to a television to view, but it clearly had massive disruptive potential.
Spotting something and doing something about it are very different things. So, another explanation is that Kodak invented the technology but didn’t invest in it. Sasson himself told The New York Times that management’s response to his digital camera was “that’s cute – but don’t tell anyone about it.” A good line, but not completely accurate. In fact, Kodak invested billions to develop a range of digital cameras.
Doing something and doing the right thing are also different things. The next explanation is that Kodak mismanaged its investment in digital cameras, overshooting the market by trying to match performance of traditional film rather than embrace the simplicity of digital. That criticism perhaps held in early iterations of Kodak’s digital cameras (the $20,000 DCS-100, for example), but Kodak ultimately embraced simplicity, carving out a strong market position with technologies that made it easy to move pictures from cameras to computers.
All of that is moot, the next argument goes, because the real disruption occurred when cameras merged with phones, and people shifted from printing pictures to posting them on social media and mobile phone apps. And Kodak totally missed that.
But it didn’t, entirely.
Before Mark Zuckerberg wrote a line of Facebook’s code, Kodak made a prescient purchase, acquiring a photo sharing site called Ofoto in 2001. It was so close. Imagine if Kodak had truly embraced its historical tagline of “share memories, share life.” Perhaps it could have rebranded Ofoto as Kodak Moments (instead of EasyShare Gallery), making it the pioneer of a new category called life networking where people could share pictures, personal updates, and links to news and information. Maybe in 2010 it would have lured a young engineer from Google named Kevin Systrom to create a mobile version of the site.
In real life, unfortunately, Kodak used Ofoto to try to get more people to print digital images. It sold the site to Shutterfly as part of its bankruptcy plan for less than $25 million in April 2012. That same month Facebook plunked down $1 billion to acquire Instagram, the 13-employee company Systrom had co-founded 18 months earlier.
There were other ways in which Kodak could have emerged from the digital disruption of its core business. Consider Fuji Photo Film. As Rita Gunther McGrath describes in her compelling book The End of Competitive Advantage, in the 1980s Fuji was a distant second in the film business to Kodak. While Kodak stagnated and ultimately stumbled, Fuji aggressively explored new opportunities, creating products adjacent to its film business, such as magnetic tape optics and videotape, and branching into copiers and office automation, notably through a joint venture with Xerox. Today the company has annual revenues above $20 billion, competes in healthcare and electronics operations and derives significant revenues from document solutions.
The right lessons from Kodak are subtle. Companies often see the disruptive forces affecting their industry. They frequently divert sufficient resources to participate in emerging markets. Their failure is usually an inability to truly embrace the new business models the disruptive change opens up. Kodak created a digital camera, invested in the technology, and even understood that photos would be shared online. Where they failed was in realizing that online photo sharing was the new business, not just a way to expand the printing business.
So, if your company is beginning to talk about a digital transformation, make sure you ask three questions:
- What business are we in today? Don’t answer the question with technologies, offerings, or categories. Instead, define the problem you are solving for customers, or, in our parlance “the job you are doing for them.” For Kodak, that’s the difference between framing itself as a chemical film company vs. an imaging company vs. a moment-sharing company.
- What new opportunities does the disruption open up? Our colleague Clark Gilbert described more than a decade ago a great irony of disruption. Perceived as a threat, disruption is actually a great growth opportunity. Disruption always grows markets, but it also always transforms business models. Gilbert’s research showed how executives who perceive threats are rigid in response; those who see opportunities are expansive.
- What capabilities do we need to realize these opportunities? Another great irony is that incumbents are best positioned to seize disruptive opportunities. After all, they have many capabilities that entrants are racing to replicate, such as access to markets, technologies, and healthy balance sheets. Of course, these capabilities impose constraints as well, and are almost always insufficient to compete in new markets in new ways. Approach new growth with appropriate humility.
Kodak remains a sad story of potential lost. The American icon had the talent, the money, and even the foresight to make the transition. Instead it ended up the victim of the aftershocks of a disruptive change. Learn the right lessons, and you can avoid its fate."

[///M TOWN]

Originally Posted by SamS

And after we read this interview, which of those approaches is BMW taking?

There is no doubt BMW has ridiculously become a timid follower.

I cannot believe they sold their Carbon Fiber Plant.

[tna3]

Originally Posted by bagekko

Charging an EV at home on a 30a 120v circuit is not feasible depending on how much you drive daily. Using that would take over 24hrs to charge my current i3 if the battery was near zero. Even using the BMW Turbo Cord on a 30a 220v plug I setup can barely charge it to full overnight as the i3 goes 150 miles some days.

A home with 100a may or may not be able to have a 220v plug for an EV depending on what else is in the house, would prolly trip something if the dryer, oven, and EV were being charged at the same time with all the other juice flowing in the house. Else many homes would have to charge on 120v and that is a frustrating EV future that no one will adopt.

Adding to this, many households have more than 1 vehicle. Charging 2 or more at the same time takes even a bigger chunk of what's available. No one denies in a ideal world EV's are cleaner. Sure, upgrades are possible; circuit panels, dig up to install larger lines from street, add solar, home batteries etc. Fact of the matter is cost becomes prohibitive and goes beyond initial BEV acquisition for many situations. Especially in rural areas.

[SamS]

Originally Posted by tna3

Adding to this, many households have more than 1 vehicle. Charging 2 or more at the same time takes even a bigger chunk of what's available. No one denies in a ideal world EV's are cleaner. Sure, upgrades are possible; circuit panels, dig up to install larger lines from street, add solar, home batteries etc. Fact of the matter is cost becomes prohibitive and goes beyond initial BEV acquisition for many situations. Especially in rural areas.

So BMW should invest to pursue that shrinking rural population and those that don’t have access to >100A of electricity at their homes.

Focusing on a declining gas/diesel product until it turns into 0% market share in 20-30 years seems insane.

I had no idea they sold their CF plant. How awesome would a Model S be made out of carbon fiber??

BMW should ask themselves “How many former Tesla owners are we winning back with our new line of SAVs, vs. how many customers are we losing to Tesla?” It’s 0% to 100%, right?

[Dog Face Pony Soldier]

Originally Posted by SamS

I think BMW is underestimating the shift to electrification...

I think many are overestimating the shift to electrification.

Look at that we both have opinions!

[Dog Face Pony Soldier]

Originally Posted by tna3

Adding to this, many households have more than 1 vehicle. Charging 2 or more at the same time takes even a bigger chunk of what's available.

This is an excellent point. Most households have 2 vehicles, but many families have 3 or more. That's a lot of current in just charging cars.

[Dog Face Pony Soldier]

First, bless this man for bringing reality back to the discussion. ICE aren't going anywhere for decades and decades. Also, people should remember that government mandates are driving the shift toward EVs as much as consumer demand.

[SamS]

Originally Posted by glennQNYC

First, bless this man for bringing reality back to the discussion. ICE aren't going anywhere for decades and decades.

And neither are landline telephones. But is the company that focuses on traditional telephones the one you’d count on the be successful, profitable and innovative?

[KRS_SN]

Originally Posted by SamS

And neither are landline telephones. But is the company that focuses on traditional telephones the one you’d count on the be successful, profitable and innovative?

landline and mobiles work on electricity and the landline is cleaner and more environment friendly. who knows in a few years there might be a massive tax on mobiles and a government subsidy to revive landlines though nobody wants them lol!

[Dog Face Pony Soldier]

Originally Posted by SamS

And neither are landline telephones. But is the company that focuses on traditional telephones the one you'd count on the be successful, profitable and innovative?

Were there government mandates to outlaw landlines? No. Did the government need us to fund tax subsidies to incentivize people to buy cell phones? No. Consumer demand/preferences drove the technology. It wasn't politicians mandating how you made a phone call. Failed analogy.

Ignoring consumer demand (or lack thereof) is not a smart business decision in a free market.

[BigT]

Originally Posted by SamS

That interview reads like a long list of excuses on why BMW can’t offer a competitive BEV today. And fuel cell hydrogen? Please. Never going to work due to fuel cell size and lack of infrastructure.

I think BMW is underestimating the shift to electrification, and this interview reinforces their “wait and see” strategy.

Mr. Froehlich was never a friend of BEV. He represents the classic engine engineers who have a strong influence in this company.

[Logical]

When they stop making V8s I'm moving on. Appreciate the heads up!!