BMW Says Electric Car Mass Production Not Viable Until 2020 (reuters.com)

BMW will not mass produce electric cars until 2020 because its current technology is not profitable enough to scale up for volume production, the chief executive said on Thursday. From a report: Munich-based BMW unveiled its first battery electric car in 2013, and has been working on different generations of battery, software and electric motor technology since then. The i8 Roadster model, due to hit showrooms in May, is equipped with what BMW calls its fourth-generation electric drive technology. Advances in battery raw materials and chemistry has increased its range by 40 percent over the previous version, BMW said. BMW is working to make electric car technology more modular and scalable to make mass production commercially viable. "We wanted to wait for the fifth generation to be much more cost competitive," Chief Executive Harald Krueger told analysts in Munich. "We do not want to scale up with the fourth generation."

Comments

China already doing it

[WillAffleckUW]

Look, BMW just doesn't want to do this, because of profit factors, not because they are not capable of making a profit doing it.

They can convert easily. There are companies in Asia that produce far more all electric vehicles than BMW does, and they converted much more quickly and scaled up.

Did I miss something?

[rsilvergun]

Is it 1980? Because if not 2020 is 2 years away. That's not even a blip in an industry as large as cars. The headline shouldn't be "not viable until 2020" it should be "will be viable by 2020".