They’ve served their purpose, so why bother?
As the automotive industry moves towards electric mobility, moving at lightning pace to embrace tomorrow’s technology with today’s trend indicators, it’s understandable why some carmakers wouldn’t want to get overly sentimental about any one model. As we’ve seen previously, pissing off purists in the name of improved commercial success is a decision that almost every car company is willing to make. But when you’re plotting new courses for a nascent sub-marque, the conditions can be even more cutthroat.
Take BMW’s electrified sub-division ‘i’ for example. They debuted not all that long ago with the i3, which was available as an electric vehicle or a range-extender electric vehicle (shoving a small petrol-electric generator up front). Then came the BMW i8, which showed the potency of a petrol-electric hybrid that you could use every day. They both set the pace for BMW i and displayed the marque’s intent to use its cars as a way to prove concepts that it intends to roll out into production models.
However, the i3 and the i8 have both served their purpose for BMW i. Therefore, BMW’s not all that confident that either model will see renewal for a second generation.
“With the new i3 and i8, we don’t think about it. For i, there won’t always be an i3, and then an i3 after — i is not a parallel of BMW. It worked at a time, but why do it more than once? The i8 could be [like] the M1 — it doesn’t always have to be a name at BMW. We give an answer to what people, customers are requiring, at that moment in time.” — Domagoj Dukec, Senior Designer, BMW i
This is in line with BMW’s intended repositioning of the ‘i’ submarque, which intends to offer only bespoke ‘i’ models as a proof of concept, to cater to specific demands of any given time, rather than form a complete model lineup addressing every possible whim and fancy. The offerings under ‘i’ will be diversified by offering highly-electrified variants of standard BMW models, Autocar reports.
The next BMW ‘i’ model will arrive in the form of the iX3, a high-riding crossover built to the same size and offering as the BMW X3, albeit with a far more ecological powertrain. A production of the i Vision Dynamics concept car is also set to debut come 2021, and is being referred to internally as the i20.
BMW is set to introduce some 11 electric models by 2025, with the marque even going as far as to patent some 9 or so names for BMW i to use in the future. Among the more noteworthy protected names is i4, suggesting that the marque is working on an electrified variant of its 4-Series GT model.
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