BMW i Born Electric Tour Distances German EV Competition

BMW is opening its i Born Electric Tour with a bang, waving the local competition a friendly goodbye and thumbing its nose at the Italian sleepy EV movement.

It’s fair to say BMW is doing everything it can to surpass and overtake it’s local German competition when it comes to electric cars, EV. The BMW i Born Electric Tour is yet another way of showing how the company is distancing itself from the trailing Mercedes Daimler group and Audi.

The Tour and Why. Obviously, BMW is much more active then its native competitors and has made good use of its PR department to show what it is doing and how far it has come. In only a few years, BMW was able to stun us with a gorgeous Efficient Dynamics concept that will see the light of day as a plug-in hybrid, PHEV, the i8. Not happy with a PHEV, the company will also offer the i8 a little sister, the all-electric i3. The BMW i Born Electric Tour will showcase what the company has to offer by visiting a few cities, Dusseldorf, Tokyo, New York, London, Paris, and Shanghai.

The BMW i group wants to you it is launching these vehicles and that they have extremely low environmental impact, designed for modern individual mobility and sustainability. In other words, BMW gets it and they want you to know.

It’s one thing to build a plug-in hybrid and an electric car, it’s quite another making sure potential buyers have a good experience in the hands of these new cars. For this BMW has thought out an intelligent system around its strategy, structured around a 4-pillar theme I previously discussed here http://www.torquenews.com/1079/bmw-opens-its-i-stores-eye-sustainability .

According to Franz Jung, President and Managing Director of BMW Italia S.p.A. where the BMW i Tour will make its first stop in Rome: “We are very proud, that this world tour is starting out from Italy and from the city of Rome. This major urban city is predestined for innovative solutions and we wanted to confirm our commitment to sustainable mobility.” Here is a video to give you a taste of things to come.

A few years ago, the German auto manufacturers lagged behind the rest of the world with electric cars. Preferring the eventual but further possibility of a hydrogen drivetrain over the much faster adoption of a pure electric battery operated vehicle, BMW seems to have taken the lead with EVs and PHEVs. If Mercedes invested in Tesla Motors and electrified some of its Smart EV prototypes, BMW did the same with AC Propulsion. A few Minis were successfully converted and gathered valuable data. Will Audi take up the challenge? So far, the company hasn’t shown much more than prototypes.

One thing that should stand out with BMW’s i Electric Tour’s first stop is none other than in Italy, rubbing Fiat’s nose with an electric car i3 and a plug-in hybrid, i8 while we wait for the Fiat 500 electric.