The most exciting interviews to read with automobile managers are mostly those with the development managers of the manufacturers. They are the closest to the future issues and how we will get around in ten years. BMWs In a conversation with Automotive News Europe, development chief Klaus Fröhlich accordingly gave some interesting news about upcoming hydrogen cars in Munich’s new ranges Plug-in hybridswhat are the current challenges for pure electric cars and how BMW views the topic of electromobility globally.
At the beginning of the interview, Fröhlich confirmed BMW’s opinion to a flexible vehicle architecture, which can accommodate combustion, plug-in hybrid and battery-electric drives at the same time, whereby the individual vehicles are all created on the same assembly line. This is “the best solution for the next five to ten years“Said the manager. “However, when the world becomes completely electric, we will develop dedicated architecturesAnnounced Fröhlich.
For 2021, BMW’s head of development also announced plug-in hybrids that offer up to 120 kilometers of purely electric range – a good three times as much as the average daily mileage of a car in Germany. A pilot production of fuel cell drives for the large SUV models X6 and X7 is also planned for the beginning of the new decade. BMW uses the know-how of the development partner Toyota back with the Mirai has had a standard hydrogen car in its range since 2014.
At the moment, however, fuel cells are hardly useful from a cost perspective alone. A fuel cell powertrain currently costs about ten times as much as a pure battery system. BMW plans to offset these costs by 2025 with the third generation of its scalable fuel cell system, “which could result in a volume of hundreds of thousands“, so happy. Until 2025, purely battery electric cars will still be the “most suitable solution for passenger cars“. BMW also sees fuel cells “as a practicable solution for light and heavy trucks that are confronted with very strict CO2 reduction targets“.
The most important technical challenge for electric cars at the moment is charging: “Each cell needs an individual charge cycle to minimize the risk of overheating. This reduces the life and range of the batteriese ”, explains Fröhlich in the interview. “Charging too quickly could wear the battery down in just two to three years, which would make a customer very unhappy given the high cost of replacing a battery pack.“He recommends electric car drivers,”Ideally“Carry out every 20th charge on a DC fast charging station, the rest on a conventional AC wallbox.
Why there are hardly any electric cars in Russia, the Middle East and Africa
Globally, Fröhlich assumes that electrified vehicles will account for around 20 to 30 percent of global sales by 2030, “but with a very different global distribution. China’s large east coast cities will soon become fully electric, while western China will have to rely on gasoline engines for the next 15 to 20 years due to a lack of infrastructure“Said the BMW manager. In Europe, Fröhlich finds plug-in hybrids “the right solution. They are used as electric cars during the week and run on petrol on weekends or long trips“.
In the United States, the situation is divided: Most Americans would continue to drive with conventional gasoline engines, Fröhlich believes. BMW sees electric cars in the USA “mainly in the west coast and in parts of the east coast“. And looking at the rest of the world, one has to consider that, among other things, “Russia, the Middle East and Africa“Areas,”in which there is currently no charging infrastructure. ”Electric cars will probably have to wait longer in these regions.
Source: Automotive News Europe – BMW r & d chief sees rising demand for diverse, multifunctional powertrains
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