BMW Group aims for 1m EVs by 2021

BMW Group aims to have one million electrified vehicles on the roads by the end of 2021. 

Oliver Zipse, BMW AG board of management chairman, announced BMW’s electromobility intentions at the Frankfurt motor show on September 10. 

“We are already right at the forefront of electromobility,” Zipse says. “No manufacturer has delivered more electrified cars to customers in Germany so far this year than the BMW Group. In Norway, three out of every four new BMW Group vehicles sold have an electrified drive train.” 

Over 50% of new vehicle registrations in China’s premium segment will be batter-electric vehicles (BEV) in 2030, BMW Group forecasts. The figures for Europe and US will only be about half that number. 

“The BMW Group is a global company. We will be able to offer our customers all relevant drive technologies: our conventional engines with benchmark efficiency, battery-electric drive trains, plug-in hybrids and, in the future, hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles,” Zipse says. 

Hydrogen fuel cell technology is expected to be in demand in the second half of the 2020’s, the BMW Group predicts. It will be launching a test fleet of fuel cell vehicles in 2022. BMW will unveil its Hydrogen Next fuel cell development vehicle at the motor show from September 12-22.

Zipse confirms the 25 electrified models planned for 2025 will be available two years earlier, and more than half of the models will be fully electric.

“We aim to reduce emissions significantly. To realise this, we must concentrate on areas where we can achieve the greatest impact. We are therefore focusing on the question: Which drive trains, technologies and services will our customers want in the future?”

Zipse says BMW is committed to the Paris climate agreement.

The BMW iX3 will be launched in 2020 and features a fifth-generation e-drive system – manufactured without rare earth, and cobalt from its battery cells sourced directly from Australian and Moroccan mines.