<story><title>BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bmw-results-electrification/bmw-says-electric-car-mass-production-not-viable-until-2020-idUSKBN1GY1BQ</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>reubenswartz</author><text>This has a lot to do with culture. Microsoft had a mockup of an e-reader before the Kindle, but the powers that be in the company insisted that it should run Windows (not out of malice, but because that&amp;#x27;s how they saw the world.) When Bezos, who, at the time, ran a giant bookstore, started his Kindle project, he put them on a secret team in a different building.&lt;p&gt;Car companies are run by people who love engines that burn gas. The notion that electric vehicles might be something more than compliance nightmares, that they might actually be better &lt;i&gt;cars&lt;/i&gt; than gas-powered vehicles is foreign. It&amp;#x27;s like the Microsoft execs saying &amp;quot;of course the e-reader should also be able to open spreadsheets and what-not.&amp;quot; Meanwhile, the Kindle is better as an e-reader because they started from the ground up.&lt;p&gt;Same thing with Tesla. (With whom, none of these companies would be talking about going electric.) They started from the ground up.&lt;p&gt;If BMW wanted to make money on electric vehicles, Tesla has proven that you can sell an $80-$100K+ electric car (with a ~$50K interior) with profitable unit economics. I&amp;#x27;m pretty sure an electric 7-series would sell like hotcakes, and make money. Instead, you get the i3, which some people love, but it&amp;#x27;s certainly an acquired taste, and the 3 series e, which I drove recently-- it has about 11 miles of electric range. ;( If they just made it all electric, I&amp;#x27;d buy one tomorrow at the already high 3-series prices. But the culture isn&amp;#x27;t there yet...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mmalone</author><text>This is a whole lot of conjecture. Auto manufacturers were investing in alternative fuel way before Tesla came around. BMW lost some ground on electric because they made a huge bet on hydrogen in the late 90s&amp;#x2F;early 2000s that didn’t pan out (which is too bad because it probably would have been better and easier to transition to). There will always be nostalgia for the “purity” and raw mechanical feel of older big gas engines, but car people tend to like better cars, regardless of tech. Gas engines are getting smaller across the board. Many of the newest hypercars incorporate electric motors, and they’ve been generally well received.&lt;p&gt;I think what’s most likely is that they are right: they can’t reliably produce electric cars at scale that meet all of their requirements and customer expectations. Tesla is having trouble doing it, why wouldn’t BMW? Musk is charismatic and well liked. He is able to speculate wildly and miss deadlines with little consequence. I think BMW is right that they wouldn’t be given the same affordances by investors and consumers.</text></comment>
<story><title>BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bmw-results-electrification/bmw-says-electric-car-mass-production-not-viable-until-2020-idUSKBN1GY1BQ</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>reubenswartz</author><text>This has a lot to do with culture. Microsoft had a mockup of an e-reader before the Kindle, but the powers that be in the company insisted that it should run Windows (not out of malice, but because that&amp;#x27;s how they saw the world.) When Bezos, who, at the time, ran a giant bookstore, started his Kindle project, he put them on a secret team in a different building.&lt;p&gt;Car companies are run by people who love engines that burn gas. The notion that electric vehicles might be something more than compliance nightmares, that they might actually be better &lt;i&gt;cars&lt;/i&gt; than gas-powered vehicles is foreign. It&amp;#x27;s like the Microsoft execs saying &amp;quot;of course the e-reader should also be able to open spreadsheets and what-not.&amp;quot; Meanwhile, the Kindle is better as an e-reader because they started from the ground up.&lt;p&gt;Same thing with Tesla. (With whom, none of these companies would be talking about going electric.) They started from the ground up.&lt;p&gt;If BMW wanted to make money on electric vehicles, Tesla has proven that you can sell an $80-$100K+ electric car (with a ~$50K interior) with profitable unit economics. I&amp;#x27;m pretty sure an electric 7-series would sell like hotcakes, and make money. Instead, you get the i3, which some people love, but it&amp;#x27;s certainly an acquired taste, and the 3 series e, which I drove recently-- it has about 11 miles of electric range. ;( If they just made it all electric, I&amp;#x27;d buy one tomorrow at the already high 3-series prices. But the culture isn&amp;#x27;t there yet...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>davewritescode</author><text>I think you’re way oversimplifying the situation.  BMW isn’t anything like Microsoft.&lt;p&gt;It’s important to remember that, if you count hybrids, BMW already sells more electrified cars than Tesla and the vast majority of them at a more affordable price point than Tesla (the i3 is a pretty good value).&lt;p&gt;BMW sells a ton of cars and has made pretty good progress on the electric front.  They’re just not a hype machine like Tesla.</text></comment>