What is BMW's i brand?

BMW's i3 and i8 models previewed two months ago signalled the company's green product development strategy for the future, but the BMWi brand doesn't end there.

According to Piers Scott, BMW Australia's Head of Corporate Communications, the new sub brand is not simply a wrapper for green cars sold through BMW dealers. The sub brand is involved in marshalling capital and development resource for green ventures in which BMW has an interest.

"[BMWi] represents a lot more than just vehicle technology;" Scott explained. "BMWi Ventures is effectively an investment vehicle — and we've taken joint venture partnership stakes in a lot of technologies and start-ups and various other service providers, such as 'DriveNow'."

DriveNow is BMW's alternative to the Benz Car2Go service, with 1 Series and MINI models standing in for the smart fortwo.

It's a joint-venture operation, says Scott, based around users renting and operating the car through smartphone technology. The user loads an iPhone app to download a code to start the car and is then charged for the usage of the vehicle at the end of the journey.

BMWi is also involved in a new service named 'MyCityWay', which, like DriveNow, is reliant on an iPhone to assist users reach a destination in the most fuel-frugal way available, taking into account real-time traffic information.

But the highest-profile manifestation of the BMWi brand is the product — the i3 electric vehicle and the i8 plug-in hybrid (pictured). Many will see BMWi as a stable for automotive product, rather than a business entity that also fosters the development of new intellectual property.

Given BMW already markets some greener variants of existing vehicle platforms that aren't channelled through BMWi, how long can BMWi last as a separate operation before it's folded into the mainstream business?

"Essentially, thinking very long term, [BMWi] may well be absorbed into the BMW brand, holistically… but I think we're taking stabs in the dark, when you're talking that far ahead," Scott said.

Although the i8 is a hybrid of sorts — a plug-in hybrid, specifically — other BMW hybrids are sold alongside the mainstream BMW models on which they're based. There's the recently announced ActiveHybrid 5 for instance — a car that is a BMW, but not an i model. Plainly there's a lot of overlap and slipping through the cracks between main brand and sub brand, in the context of new product.

In the week before the M5's presentation to Aussie journalists in Spain, Scott told motoring.com.au that the ActiveHybrid 5's drivetrain technology could flow through to other mainstream models in the BMW range.

"I do think it is quite possible that the technology could drip down, certainly to a 3 Series," he said, but he warned of BMW's corporate view that hybrid technology was packaging-intense and not necessarily the best choice for smaller cars. Smaller cars are more likely to offer fuel-efficient and alternative-energy variants through either the BMWi brand or the as yet unnamed city car — as a mainstream BMW model.

"There comes a point where hybrid technology is not necessarily the most suitable; particularly in small, compact car categories, where micro and even three-cylinder diesel engines offer a greater fuel economy benefit than a hybrid would. Certainly there's potential in the mid-size sedan-car class for additional hybrids."

Given Scott's explanation in Spain that the BMWi brand was effectively an offshoot of BMW — just like the company's M Division, but committed to the green movement rather than performance and driving enjoyment — what are the chances the sub brand strategy will change and evolve? Will the ActiveHybrid 5 and other hybrid BMWs eventually fall under the BMWi umbrella?

"It's too early to say," said Scott, "but we are investing more in the area of BMWi and our fully-electric vehicle technology — and we see that as the best course of action for the time being.

"At this stage [hybrids and EVs] remain quite distinct — and the main reason for that is that BMWi is an entirely new vehicle architecture and the vehicles built under that sub brand are built from the ground up. So for the time being they remain completely distinct, both in terms of branding and development approach."

That, from a product standpoint, is what stands between green BMWs and the i-branded BMWs. The hybrids are developments of existing model platforms, the i3 and i8 are unique to BMWi and are built using architecture that doesn't necessarily lend itself to large-scale series production. There can be cross-pollination, says Scott, from BMWi to BMW and back (or even between BMWi and BMW M).

"That's not to say there wouldn't be technology sharing across the brand, but they do remain quite distinct — and in the case of BMWi for the core reason that they are 'born electric' as we like to say. So [they're] developed from the ground up with this unique chassis approach —what we call the drive life module whereby the drive module is comprised of the battery packs forming the chassis and a fully carbonfibre-reinforced plastic passenger cell.

"Obviously that remains quite separate from our standard production series: 1, 3, 5 Series and so on."

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