New energy to the right, BMW and Guo Biting to the left.
A few days ago, BMW R & D director Frank Weber said in an interview with The German media: BMW is developing a new generation of internal combustion engines, there are gasoline diesel, there are six cylinders and eight cylinder engines.
At the same time, he also stressed that in order to effectively reduce carbon dioxide emissions, BMW will use new technologies on new engines, such as the introduction of new devices on the cylinder head.
At this juncture, BMW's move is really confusing to the second monk.
Even more paradoxical is the ambiguous new generation of pure tram platforms.
In March last year, BMW took the opportunity of its annual financial report meeting to announce the "three-step" plan for electrification transformation.
This is the only attraction of this plan – from 2025 to 2030, BMW will launch a new "new generation" (Neue Klasse), a car-making platform designed for pure electric models.
The new generation of pure tram platforms is like two sons of Iron Bound Dink, suddenly giving birth to a child.
With the new generation of pure electric platform on the agenda, we also have a little more expectations for BMW's future pure electric vehicles.
The peak circuit turns to a change in BMW's caliber.
BMW admits that the new generation of platforms has a clear electric tendency in design, as well as high intelligence, and the platform also supports the use of traditional internal combustion engine vehicles to build.
In the end, the new generation is still a flexible platform, but it is more advanced, which also shows the hesitation of BMW's electrification strategy from the side.
Dead end internal combustion engine
And the internal combustion engine died, BMW had already foreshadowed.
BMW, which develops aero engines, seems to have an unusual preference for internal combustion engines. In addition to the V12, which symbolically abandons the pyramid tip, the 6-cylinder and 8-cylinder machines are still in the iterative list.
BMW Group CEO Chiptzer once said that BMW should adhere to the diversified drive platform and flexible production, so that customers and the market can decide whether to produce pure electric models, hybrid or fuel models.
Frank Weber, director of research and development, recently declared more bluntly that since many automotive markets around the world are unlikely to be ready for full electrification by 2030, BMW board members believe that the market still needs BMW models equipped with engines.
The attitude of these executives towards fuel vehicles and internal combustion engines can actually be seen from BMW's global sales data in 2021.
BMW sold 2.52 million vehicles worldwide in 2021, which is the first time in the past 5 years that Mercedes-Benz has been surpassed by BMW, and more importantly, BMW has surpassed itself and achieved the best sales ever.
In 2021, the three major brands of BMW, Rolls-Royce and MINI will rise across the board.
The BMW brand sold 2213795 new cars worldwide, up 9.1% year-on-year, the most glorious year in BMW's history.
Rolls-Royce's global sales in 2021 were 5586 units, a 48.7% year-on-year increase. This is the highest sales volume in the brand's 117-year history.
The three major markets of China, the United States and Germany have built a stable sales triangle for BMW.
The Chinese market delivered 846237 vehicles, up 8.9% year-on-year, leading the luxury brand market. The US market achieved a 19.5% increase in the 366574 units, setting a record for the largest increase in its global single market.
BMW is ushering in the best era, and the biggest contributor to this era is the traditional fuel vehicle.
Feel the stones to cross the river
In the new energy track, BMW has never been a conservative force.
On the contrary, the three letters of BMW are the pioneers of the exploration of electric vehicles. As far back as 1972, BMW had already introduced the 1602 Elektro-Antrieb pure tram.
It's just that this awkwardly named electric car, because the clumsy lead-acid battery and poor mileage were not mass-produced, but appeared in front of the world as a service car for the 20th Munich Olympic Games.
Almost after the turn of the millennium, BMW began to develop its own unambitious new energy strategy.
Since 2007, the multi-billion dollar Project i project has brought BMW a pure electric vehicle chassis that represents the future of technology, and on this basis, the BMW i3 has been created.
If you look at it from the current point of view, the BMW i3 is a very bad electric car. But around 2010, whether it is the advanced design language or the not bad endurance performance, bmw i3 makes us feel the vision and strength of BMW's new energy blueprint.
We all know that Porsche is a successful example of transformation. It not only maintains the performance characteristics of the era of fuel vehicles, but also becomes the bearer of cutting-edge cutting-edge technology.
BMW does not want this, but BMW tries to keep too many things, brand tone, control level, profit level, sales quality.......
All this contributes to BMW's attitude towards both fuel and electric routes – there is no clear route choice, which is BMW's choice.
Perhaps, BMW will be the last luxury brand to abandon the internal combustion engine.
But until then, BMW will never admit to being behind anyone on the road to electrification.
On the one hand, BMW's new energy vehicle sales are not bad.
At present, BMW is also the only brand in the BBA to announce new energy sales. In 2021, BMW's new energy models sold more than 48,000 units, an increase of 69.6% year-on-year.
Among them, bmw iX3 sold more than 21,000 vehicles in the whole year, becoming the sales champion of BBA new energy vehicles.
On the other hand, BMW is also actively trying, crossing the river by feeling the stones.
This river is the new energy track, and this stone is Rolls-Royce.
In 2021, BMW's ultra-luxury brand Rolls-Royce launched its first electric vehicle, the Spectre, marking Rolls-Royce's first step towards full electrification in 2030.
At the beginning of the new year of 2022, the news of the first road test of the Shining prototype was leaked out, and the model is expected to be officially launched before 2023.
The Shining is based on Rolls-Royce's "luxury architecture". Not surprisingly, when the Shining goes public, the world will usher in the most expensive pure tram in history, and its price will not be less than $500,000.
The starting point of traditional luxury brands exceeds all the new car-making forces born from PPT.
In order to ensure the luxury attributes of pure trams, luxury brands often take a high-to-low approach, and Mercedes-Benz is the best example.
EQS under the EVA pure electric architecture is the first pure electric car in the true sense of Mercedes-Benz, and it is a million-level luxury car.
Sima Zhao's heart is well known to passers-by. The next thing Mercedes needs to do is to lay down the product under the EQS.
The Shining also has this effect.
If the Shining can be recognized by the original Rolls-Royce customer group, then such a means of building will naturally be transplanted to the electrified BMW 7 series, and then covered with bmw products.
This way of continuing the ultra-luxurious bloodline will make BMW's new and old users very useful.
Children distinguish between right and wrong, and adults only look at the pros and cons.
Swinging between the two routes of fuel and electric is not necessarily a bad thing. The paranoia about the internal combustion engine is not necessarily the result of BMW's deliberations.
Of course, I personally expect BMW to focus on electric cars. How interesting it would be if BMW could transplant fuel-age controls to electric cars as well.
Who says tesla is the template for electric cars? BMW too.