It was only a matter of time before other car manufacturers started following Tesla’s lead. On Wednesday, BMW
announced a strategic shift which will see the company investing in new
technologies in order to more readily compete with Uber, Tesla and
Google — three companies threatening to turn the auto industry on its
head.According to The Wall Street Journal,
BMW CEO Harald Krüger, the man who replaced former chief Norbert
Reithofer in 2015, said the following on Wednesday: “We are leading BMW
into a new era.”That new era won’t be drastically different from the one that came before it. As WSJ
notes, the last notable strategy shift from BMW came in 2007 in the
form of Reithofer’s Strategy One plan. This plan was the impetus for
the i-Series electric cars, and now Krüger wants to follow up with his
own plan, appropriately dubbed Strategy One Next.Strategy One Next will involve the addition of a third model in the i-Series called the iNEXT. In WSJ‘s
report, BMW says that the iNEXT is expected to “incorporate a
still-to-be-determined electric powertrain, new lightweight materials, a
self-driving mode” and “technology that connects the car to the
Internet.”It
could be more than five years before an iNEXT model appears in a
showroom, but in the meantime, BMW plans to focus on launching an
open-top roadster version of the i8 in 2018 and an i3 with a more
powerful battery later this year. BMW also expects to roll out more SUVs
in order to pay for its investment in electric technology.Finally, Krüger
said that the company wants to offer hybrid versions of each of its
core models in the future, but that fuel cells likely won’t be viable
until 2025.It was only a matter of time before other car manufacturers started following Tesla’s lead. On Wednesday, BMW
announced a strategic shift which will see the company investing in new
technologies in order to more readily compete with Uber, Tesla and
Google — three companies threatening to turn the auto industry on its
head.According to The Wall Street Journal,
BMW CEO Harald Krüger, the man who replaced former chief Norbert
Reithofer in 2015, said the following on Wednesday: “We are leading BMW
into a new era.”That new era won’t be drastically different from the one that came before it. As WSJ
notes, the last notable strategy shift from BMW came in 2007 in the
form of Reithofer’s Strategy One plan. This plan was the impetus for
the i-Series electric cars, and now Krüger wants to follow up with his
own plan, appropriately dubbed Strategy One Next.Strategy One Next will involve the addition of a third model in the i-Series called the iNEXT. In WSJ‘s
report, BMW says that the iNEXT is expected to “incorporate a
still-to-be-determined electric powertrain, new lightweight materials, a
self-driving mode” and “technology that connects the car to the
Internet.”It
could be more than five years before an iNEXT model appears in a
showroom, but in the meantime, BMW plans to focus on launching an
open-top roadster version of the i8 in 2018 and an i3 with a more
powerful battery later this year. BMW also expects to roll out more SUVs
in order to pay for its investment in electric technology.Finally, Krüger
said that the company wants to offer hybrid versions of each of its
core models in the future, but that fuel cells likely won’t be viable
until 2025.
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