BMW and Benz don green to battle it out

BMW is not resting on its laurels when it comes to environmental matters, says the company's local head of corporate communications, Piers Scott.

But against the backdrop of the company's principal competitor, Mercedes-Benz, heavily promoting its R&D efforts aimed at commercialising fuel cell vehicles, as well as electric vehicles and hybrids, BMW's efforts seem comparatively low key. Scott doesn't agree with that summation though. The company's new BMWi brand represents a strong commitment to the green movement, although the technology underpinning the two vehicles — one model a battery-electric vehicle (i3, pictured) and the other a plug-in hybrid (i8) — is arguably less advanced than Benz's fuel cell systems.

Neither of the BMWs offers hydrogen fuel cell technology, whereas Benz plans to have a fuel cell vehicle (FCV) in production as soon as next year. Furthermore, Benz claims that as many as 50,000 FCVs will be on the road in California by 2015. So BMW's apparent lack of interest in fuel cell technology seems like an oversight. While BMW has toyed with the volatile gas in the recent past, it has been as a fuel for a combustion-engined car, the Hydrogen 7, rather than in an FCV.

Mercedes-Benz has argued in recent months that electric vehicles are not necessarily a long-term solution for the future.

"That makes the assumption that electric vehicles will win out and dominate as the sole energy source and technology," Scott responded when that was put to him. "I think BMW's view is that it will be a 'horses for courses' type arrangement. When you look at the MINI-e trials, which studied usage, distance — kilometres travelled in a day on an average basis —where people wanted and needed to recharge and those sorts of things, what they found was that the average was about 38km a day [and] that they only needed two recharge points — work and home; they weren’t interested in recharging at the supermarket or the video store or at the sports club.

"So when the Victorian government did similar trials using other vehicles, despite the fact that we assume Australia to be so different and that our landscapes and lifestyles are such that we'll travel a lot further, their results mirrored perfectly that of the MINI-e trials in Europe. They found it was — within a kilometre or two — to be exactly the same. So that is well within — as a daily commuter vehicle — the range of what we're offering. Add to that the option of range extenders on the i3 and I would suggest you've got a zero-emissions vehicle with absolutely no compromise, as far as usage and practicality are concerned."

While there's certainly a school of thought that battery technology development is on a fast track and that can only be good news for consumers driving electric vehicles, the image of a hydrogen society proposed by Benz boss Dieter Zetsche just before Frankfurt motor show is an appealing one. How can BMW fit into that puzzle?

"We're all fighting for the moral high ground on this, but I do think that BMW's got quite an interesting story to tell," says Scott. "We had the Hydrogen 7 Series from 2007, so we've proven that we've cracked that chestnut and we've had a zero-emissions vehicle driving on the road for quite some time, but the real barrier to introduction there is not on the technological side, but on the infrastructural side — in terms of not having the necessary supporting infrastructure for refuelling, and hydrogen not having the political support needed to push through the barriers, in terms of start-up phase and having appropriate supply corridors and so forth."

Scott feels that the global automotive industry has declared a preference for battery-electric vehicles (EVs), since the technology in the car is simpler and there is already considerable infrastructure in place to support the vehicles.

"What has transpired since [Hydrogen 7] is that there is some convergence globally towards electric vehicles — if for no other reason than the delivery infrastructure is already in place. I don't think it's an indication of which technology is superior; it's just a fact [that] from the implementation point of view, the delivery infrastructure for electric vehicles is a much simpler adjustment to make."

But in the full glare of Dr Zetsche's speech, BMW's effort can't help but appear lacklustre.

"Don't forget that we've been quietly going about this for quite a long time, and arguably, were one of the first to move on all of this," Scott replies. "Our first hydrogen engines were unveiled in the 1970s. The Hydrogen 7s came out in about 2006, 2007. We are likely to be the first of the premium brands to go to market with an electric vehicle built from the ground up — in the form of the i3 — and EfficientDynamics, as a strategy... has meant that our emissions reduction across the entire fleet started much earlier than certainly Mercedes-Benz.

"So I think the issue is more that they're late to the party — and are now getting a bit of publicity for what they're doing, when we've sort of been all over this for quite some time. Don't just take my word on that, the proof is in the pudding — on group average fleet emissions reduction, which, in Europe, has been a much steeper reduction by BMW than Mercedes; and we're certainly a lot lower than them over here.

"And the other aspect to all of this is there really only one holistic and robust assessment of the sustainable performance of a company, which is the Dow-Jones sustainability index — and we've topped the industry for the last seven years. That looks at more than just aggregate exhaust emissions, but also the environmental impact of all your entire operations; for example, the Spartanburg plant where we make all our 'X' vehicles, draws more than half of its energy from nearby land refuse, where it captures the methane coming off the top, and then uses that to power the plant.

"The Leipzig plant where the i vehicles are to be made is a complete environmental closed-loop resource facility whereby... the production of those cars is deemed completely clean.

"We're into this boots and all, and it's more I think Mercedes that are just getting started..."

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