Following news that several senior team members at BMW?s i division have defected to a Chinese electric startup, the company is predictably keen to downplay any suggestion of a crisis.
?People at this level will always move around,? a BMW insider told us when we asked for reaction to the fact that i?s design boss Benoit Jacob, product chief Henrik Wenders, and senior powertrain engineer Dirk Abendroth will be joining the i division?s former development chief Carsten Breitfeld at Future Mobility Corp. ?It?s not like there aren?t people waiting in the wings,? we were told.
When we spoke to Wenders at the Geneva motor show, he suggested there was some internal debate about the exact form that the next i product will take, and our source confirmed that future models are some ways off. It was suggested that the car that?s most likely to be called the i5 is still some two to three years away, as is the i8 Spider. A story in Autocar suggests that the i8 coupe will receive a mid-cycle refresh very soon that will increase both its performance and range through a more powerful battery pack and electric motor, but our source has confirmed that?while BMW remains fully committed to the i division?there are no other significant new i models in the company’s long-term plan at present. The i3 has struggled to win sales in those parts of the world that don?t offer subsidies for electric vehicles, with low numbers presumably making it harder for BMW to justify large investments in ...