Photo: BMW
The BMW M division will make electric cars someday, but it might not happen too soon.
A statement made by Frank van Meel, the boss of BMW’s performance brand, has explained that electric vehicles are “unavoidable.” That means that the current chief of the BMW M division has probably analyzed the issue on all of its possible outcomes, and that the result is that the department will build a performance electric car, but its officials will not say when that will happen.
The biggest problem with electrification today is the power to weight issue of electric vehicles and hybrids, which BMW’s M division is struggling to solve. The unit wants to fit these systems into a motorsports philosophy, but implementing heavy batteries is not something easy to do for a sports car.
While admitting that EVs will come from BMW M one day, the current boss of the division has told the Brits at Auto Express that customers should expect hybrids first. These powertrains will be optimized for performance, rather than boosting efficiency, and they will come within the next few years.
The first step towards the electrification of the BMW M range has already been done, and it is called “micro-hybrid.” For those of you that are not familiar with the term, it refers to a vehicle that has a stop-start system, which helps save fuel when the automobile is sitting in traffic.
There’s more to a vehicle that is adapted to stop-start its engine than a heavy-duty battery and a better starter motor, and those components constitute what some automakers describe as a micro-hybrid.
BMW M’s boss has confirmed the fact that the division he leads is in contact with their homologs at Project i, but has no announced any developments on their products. However, the engineering teams are looking into every bit of Project i tech so that improvements might be made to those cars in the future thanks to BMW M expertise. Curiously, the BMW i8 will not be turned into an M car, and this claim comes straight from the boss of the M division.
The biggest problem with electrification today is the power to weight issue of electric vehicles and hybrids, which BMW’s M division is struggling to solve. The unit wants to fit these systems into a motorsports philosophy, but implementing heavy batteries is not something easy to do for a sports car.
While admitting that EVs will come from BMW M one day, the current boss of the division has told the Brits at Auto Express that customers should expect hybrids first. These powertrains will be optimized for performance, rather than boosting efficiency, and they will come within the next few years.
The first step towards the electrification of the BMW M range has already been done, and it is called “micro-hybrid.” For those of you that are not familiar with the term, it refers to a vehicle that has a stop-start system, which helps save fuel when the automobile is sitting in traffic.
There’s more to a vehicle that is adapted to stop-start its engine than a heavy-duty battery and a better starter motor, and those components constitute what some automakers describe as a micro-hybrid.
BMW M’s boss has confirmed the fact that the division he leads is in contact with their homologs at Project i, but has no announced any developments on their products. However, the engineering teams are looking into every bit of Project i tech so that improvements might be made to those cars in the future thanks to BMW M expertise. Curiously, the BMW i8 will not be turned into an M car, and this claim comes straight from the boss of the M division.
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