[Peakoil-announce] BMW to invest $552m in electric cars

[Jenny Goldie]

[from Business Day - the Age]
BMW commits $550m to electric car 
Leipzig 
November 8, 2010 
BMW has inaugurated what will be Germany's first factory to mass produce battery-powered cars, committing hundreds of millions of euros - as well as its prestige - to the as-yet-untested market.

BMW said it would invest ?400 million ($A552 million) until 2013 in the project, which will take place at a complex that already produces variants of the 1-Series model.

BMW did not say how many of the small vehicles, named Megacity, it would make in Leipzig. Use of the term ''series production'', though, implies the number will be in the tens of thousands.

After General Motors with its Volt, and Nissan with the battery-powered Leaf, BMW becomes the latest large carmaker to bet heavily that buyers will pay a premium for cars capable of getting most or all of their power from an electrical outlet.

BMW could have an advantage in this relatively new market because its well-heeled customers belong to the group that analysts believe will be the first to buy battery-powered cars, often as second cars used for commuting and shorter trips.

As GM and Nissan have done, BMW has begun marketing the Megacity vehicle years before it is ready. The company has not displayed a full prototype of the car and has produced only impressionistic sketches of what it will look like.

Typically, BMW begins talking publicly about a new car only a few months before it appears, to avoid depressing sales of existing models. Adrian van Hooydonk, BMW's head of design, said the company wanted to prepare buyers for a new kind of car while also responding to public curiosity.

''We have never been this open about an ongoing development process. We sense a hunger for information,'' Mr van Hooydonk said on the sidelines of the event to unveil the car, which was attended by German Chancellor Angela Merkel as well as the Governor of Washington State, Christine Gregoire. Carbon fibre for the car's passenger compartment will come from a plant in Moses Lake, Washington.

Mr van Hooydonk said BMW had settled on the basic design of the car and would soon begin road-testing prototypes.

NEW YORK TIMES