Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, more prominently known as BMW has laid out the plan for future automobile releases in their Annual Shareholder Meeting in Munich. BMW as of yesterday, completed a century of successful automobile engineering, delivering passion and value to all its customers who have faith in their vision and dedication towards pioneering mobility.
In addition to the consistent and exceptional growth, BMW is also known to offer subtle insight into their future plans at these shareholder meetings. And so they did. Harald Krueger, the CEO of the automobile company spoke with an alluring charm and charisma when announcing the future line of their high-performance vehicles, the i-class.
Lets’ back-track a little and take a look at BMW first revolutionary electric automobile, the BMW i8. The i8 was a beast of a car when it was launched to compete with the Tesla Model S. The company has till now sold more than 50,000 vehicles, which maybe more than a mile away from Tesla – pun intended – but still a landmark.
Krueger in his statement emphasized that “the electro-mobility battle is a marathon and not a sprint”.
Thus, BMW is looking forward to launch upgraded electric vehicles starting 2018, by expanding the elite BMW i series. A new i3 with an improved battery life and some under-the hood enhancements will be launched in the coming weeks. This upgrade will then be followed by the i8 Roadster in 2018. The i8 will then be succeeded by what will be an innovative new vehicle, the BMW i-NEXT. Krueger says that the i-NEXT will be the first BMW to ever offer,
our new innovation driver, with autonomous driving, digital connectivity, intelligent lightweight design, a totally new interior and ultimately bringing the next generation of electro-mobility to the road.
While there was no more discussion what-so-ever about the i-NEXT, Krueger went on to discuss about the future of self-driving cars, sustainable mobility and the debatable topic of the safety of autonomous vehicles. The only detail that is certain about the i-NEXT is that the design will be ripped off from the pages of BMW’s Vision Next 100 project(as seen above). A futuristic shape-morphing car on the interior as well as the exterior.
There are still of lot of unanswered questions and features that will only see the light of day in 2021, when the electric vehicle market would expanded even more. With Tesla launching the economic version of their (in)famous Tesla Model S, for the masses. LeEco, the Japanese device manufacturer has also entered the electric and self-driving vehicle arena with their version of the next big electric car in partnership with Faraday Future. And with Google also experimenting and partnering with other car manufacturers, who will ultimately win the autonomous electric race is for sure, an exciting result to wait for.
