BMW to boost EV range with SUVs

BMW is in the middle of a spending spree and a tech war that will boost its green cars, hinting strongly at a series of electrified SUVs.

The company that began its electrified vehicle strategy with the experimental i3 city-hatch and the plug-in hybrid i8 sports car has locked down the naming rights for everything from the i1 to the i9 and from the iX1 for SUVs through to the iX9.

Group CEO Harald Krueger admitted at a VIP function last Friday that the much-hyped i-NEXT (most likely to be called the i5) would be the next electric BMW, with up to 700km of battery range, to be followed by a fully electric X3.

"In 2020 we will launch the fully electric X3. In it, X and i come together," Krueger teased.

“BMW is the market leader in electrified cars – it’s not Tesla – and the market has increased by 30 per cent this year.

“Whoever drives an electric car will stick to it. We are at the fifth generation of EVs and we need very little rare earth now in our drive systems, though solid state is clearly after 2020.”

Dr Krueger promised more to come after its much-hyped, highly autonomous iNEXT goes into production in 2020. The 7 Series will eventually be replaced as the BMW flagship by an i9, while there will also be a fully electric iX9 large SUV as BMW adapts to a post-EU7 world beyond 2020.

He also hinted strongly that BMW was already knocking on the door of Level 4 and 5 autonomy, with 40 lidar-equipped test cars running in Germany, California and Israel, collecting 40 terabytes of data per day.

“The iNext [due in 2020] will be prepared and capable for this [Level 4 and 5 autonomy], but depending on the laws in the respective areas for Level 5, but they will be developed for that,” he insisted.

BMW’s head of development, Klaus Fröhlich, backed him up later in the day, admitting again the current X3 had been designed from scratch to be electrified.

“Our model initiative will really take off with the MINI BEV, the fully electric BMW X3, the BMW iNEXT and the BMW i Vision Dynamics – so that by 2025, our line-up will comprise 25 fully or semi-electrified models, 12 of which will be fully electric.

“It’s not like we only realised this two years ago, and we are at least on eye level with an American company that only delivers BEVs.

“But there are 50 car factories in Germany. Should we make 50 more to build electric cars or make them modular?”

The competition
It’s a completely different tack to both the Volkswagen Group and Daimler, both of which have unique architectures for their electric cars that will be built in parallel to their traditional powertrains.

Volkswagen has advantages in scale, selling 10 million cars a year versus BMW’s two million, so it can get away with investing in both the MEB mass-production and the Porsche-developed J1 premium electric architectures.

Daimler, too, has its own pure battery architectures for its upcoming EQ brand, but continues to develop separate internal-combustion car architectures.

BMW expects to sell its 100,000th electric car by this Christmas, but Fröhlich admitted it has future proofed its production against different BEV take-up rates by delivering architectures that can take petrol, diesel, hybrid and BEV powertrains.

“We are making a change to a technical company,” Krueger said. “We are spending to get there, moving our research and development ratio from 6.5 per cent of our revenue to 6.7 per cent next year.

“There are two or three core reasons: investments in e-mobility, autonomous and digitalisation of processes.

“Don’t just talk the talk. Walk the Walk. We deliver on our promises; we want to make it on our own.

“It’s not just about the battery, but it’s about adding value in electric mobility. The BMW Group has a higher value-added possibilities than our competitors,” he claimed.

While an X7 has been confirmed to go on sale at least in North America and China in 2018, the badge reservations indicate BMW is prepared to go even bigger with an X8 and an X9, especially as design director Adrian von Hooydonk admitted the X7 wasn’t “that big by American standards.”

But Krueger insisted a surge in both products and technology had forced BMW to spend more money on R&D than it ever had, in a temporary surge to climb an EV and autonomous mountain.

“This (the spending surge) is also a situation that we will not have in the future,” he insisted.

“Now we work in front-wheel drive and rear-wheel drive (for all powertrains) and within a couple of years that will work and we won’t need to do that again.

“Once the cars are on that architecture we don’t have to do that anymore.

“If we want to be a technical leader we have to invest in R&D, we have to save that money somewhere else. We are in the middle of a technical competition right now,” he insisted.

BMW autonomy
The autonomy part of the question has seen BMW open a new campus outside Munich, Germany, and team up with Intel, MobilEye, Continental, Magna and, belatedly, FCA.

“Due to the system leaps, the additional requirements in terms of redundancy, computing power and connectivity for fully automated driving, we will be able to fully master Level 5 right from the outset in 2021,” Fröhlich insisted.

“From then on, we will be able to offer automation solutions worldwide in a flexible range of Level 3 to Level 5 – depending on customer demands and the respective legal framework.

“It will be just like the modular systems that you already know from our e-mobility solutions.

“However, until we reach that level, we will still have to achieve some significant technological breakthroughs. Contrary to some self-declared marketing experts, I consider autonomous driving a huge challenge,” he said.

One of the key pieces in the Level 5 puzzle will be the switch to 5G high-speed networks, with 4G simply not fast enough to transmit all the necessary data in real time.

“Today, over 10 million BMWs are fitted with an embedded SIM card – more than at any other carmaker.

“But on top of that, we also need a high-speed 5G network with data rates of up to 10 gigabits a second and high availability.

“Our entire company currently requires a data volume of 60 petabytes. Very soon, and due to the amounts of data from autonomous vehicles, our previous demand will rise to approximately 500 petabytes. The computing power has to increase by a factor of 1000.

“This is about nothing less than replacing human perception and the human brain’s ability to think and make decisions by an artificial intelligent system.”

Of all the steps in the SAE-defined autonomous levels, Fröhlich insisted the gap between Levels 3 and 4 would be the biggest step in both consumer and carmaker confidence.

“Everyone is trying to get to Level 3, but that does not take you further,” he insisted.

“We need to take the leap at some point to Level 4 and 5. We need to take the 2021 architecture that will take us to 2031 at least.

“The main challenge is the cost and quality of the more than 30 sensors we need for Level 5, because there is no laser sensor that offers the right costs and features right now.”