BMW Group has just announced their NUMBER ONE > NEXT group corporate strategy: to offer electrified versions of every single BMW and MINI vehicles from 2020 onwards. Additionally, the company’s next generation vehicle platforms will also be designed to cater to full-electric powertrains.
The first model to go full-electric will be the MINI 3-Door hatchback, due for production in 2019. This all-electric 3-Door hatchback will join the existing MINI line-up of combustion engines and plug-in hybrids. Production of the all-electric powertrain will happen in BMW Group’s e-mobility centre in Landshut and Dingolfing, Germany before incorporating into MINI’s production plant in Oxford, United Kingdom.
On the Bavarian side, the first model to adopt an all-electric powertrain will be the X3 SUV that will come as soon as 2020, presumably when the Life-Cycle Impulse (LCI) or in lay man terms, facelifted, model is due. BMW has also hinted that the all-electric iNEXT, rumoured to feature a crossover body will join the i3 model in 2021.
BMW Group projects that by 2025, electrified vehicles will account for 15 to 25 percent of sales and are committed to put 100,000 electrified vehicles on the road in 2017. Currently, there are 10 plants worldwide capable of producing electrified vehicles and Malaysia is fortunate to be one of them, producing the 330e and 740Le xDrive plug-in hybrids.
As with the case of our local tax incentives for locally produced electrified vehicles, BMW Group has expressed that factors such as regulations, incentives and infrastructure will all play a key role in determining the scale electrification from market to market. Hence, the move to build flexible platform(s) is so the company can rapidly react and adapt to changing customer demands when, not if, required.
