BMW has fully dedicated to electrification and plans to launch more than 20 plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles by 2025.
Although it is green cars that are “friendly to the environment”, the Bavarian manufacturer is not sure how popular they are among the customers.
In an interview with Car and Driver magazine, a board member of BMW said that by 2025 about 15-25% of cars produced by the company would have an electric drive train. However, Oliver Zipse admitted that the company simply guessed about that number, and that it could be from 10% up to 40%.
In our opinion, that’s a lot of speculation for a serious car company, but on the other hand, the company has great confidence in its new platform “fifth generation.” Although many companies are developing new, unique platforms for their electric vehicles, BMW is moving in a different direction, and it develops a platform that supports conventional, hybrid and electric drive circuits.
In one report it is stated that the platform will have two variants that will be closely linked. One will be for models with front-wheel drive, while the other will be reserved for rear-wheel drive vehicles. Despite this division, both versions of the platform will support drives on all wheels.
As a result, all future models of the Bavarian company will be based on a platform that is designed with a battery compartment under the floor of a car. However, most vehicles will not have that space given that BMW expects that conventional powertrain drives, or SUS aggregates, will be popular for at least a few decades to come.
The first model to be based on the “fifth generation” platform will be the iNext model that should be officially introduced in 2021. After that, there will be several more models with batteries of 60, 90 and 120 kilowatt-hours. Vehicles equipped with the largest batteries will be able to cross up to 700 kilometers with one charge.
