Tesla is in trouble.
For the first time ever, BMW sold more electric cars than Tesla in Europe. The July figures are now in, and according to analytics firm JATO Dynamics, BMW sold 14,869 new EVs in Europe last month. Tesla sold 14,561 new electric cars in July.
This means that BMW sold 308 more EVs than Tesla. And while that’s a fairly small margin, it shows how much the German automaker has quietly become a power-hitter in the electric world, even as it continues to offer hybrid, plug-in hybrid and gas options too.
JATO Dynamics states that Tesla experienced a bit of a slump last month in Europe, with registrations of both the Model Y and Model 3 falling. Model Y sales were down 16% to 9,544 units sold. Meanwhile, Model 3 sales slid by 17% to 4,694. These slides allowed BMW Group to narrowly move into first place for EV sales in Europe in July.
It’s funny. BMW took an opposite approach to everyone else when it comes to EVs. I (mistakenly) thought they would fail.
Ford, VW, Mercedes, etc. were developing specific platforms for electric vehicles, given that they are different enough architecturally that using the manufacturing processes meant for internal combustion engines wouldn’t be cost efficient. However, after the experiment that the i3 was, BMW decided it was more sensible to just reuse platforms from internal combustion engine vehicles for their new EVs.
I thought this would be inefficient, besides not taking proper advantage of the packaging wins that an EV architecture allows.
A few years in, and thanks to their strategy they’ve developed a big range of EVs at a comparatively lower cost. Nobody cares that the i4 doesn’t have a frunk, or that their platform wasn’t purposely designed for EVs. Even if the manufacturing cost is higher, having a smaller upfront cost has allowed them to move faster.
Kudos to them for their success, even if it comes from playing it safe.
That’s true, but Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis have a custom E-GMP platform which has been allowing them to crank out EVs left and right and they’re selling like mad. I think it’s more that US car manufacturers are just so entrenched in the “we can’t fail” mindset from being bailed out time and time again that they really don’t care. No matter what they do they’re still gonna sell and make money. They have no chance of going out of business so they can just execute anything lazily. Tesla got lazy and haven’t released any “new model” in a decade (every Tesla looks the same besides the cybertruck). Ford only made one EV. Chevy made one that takes an hour to charge 20%. GM is only making $100k+ vehicles. It’s the exact opposite of how china is building evs.
BMW is making EVs around the same price as Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis and they’re all doing just fine with it. New cool models, no janky things like GM or Tesla. Just normal cars but electric and a few “tech” improvements.
Well if that’s what they did, they did it better than the others who tried the same thing and failed.
True. But they are also working on a new, fully electric platform, expected to launch in 2025 (the “neue Klasse”).
Just basing off what OP said…
If BMW was able to figure out how to reuse their ICE architecture for EVs and make them profitable, that at least buys them time to figure out the new EV architecture while learning about EVs.
But it’ll be impossible to stay competitive forever that way which is why they are making the other platform.
But buying themselves that time without losing a boat load of money would be a big benefit
Some of the others tried it, but didn’t make them profitable