At a recent press conference held in Munich in front of a select group of journalists, BMW’s Chief of Development, Klaus Frohlich, confirmed that the company is currently working on 48V mild-hybrids which will be launched in the near future. This will allow the company to use hybrid tech on an increasing number of cars as well as incorporate new solutions to recuperate more energy while keeping the weight down.
Pure EVs will get an increase in range thanks to new solutions, going up to around 700 km. At the same time, “Plug-in hybrids – or Power PHEVs – with about 150 kW will set new standards in terms of driving pleasure and a range of up to 100 km. And combustion engines will also set standards once again with their 48-volt recuperation systems and further great reductions in emissions,” according to Klaus Frohlich.
That’s not all though. BMW plans to have a scalable architecture for its upcoming models which will be usable on a number of models in the future. “Our new vehicle architectures and highly flexible vehicle plants will allow us to decide quickly which model to produce at which quantity and which drive to fit. So, we will have flexible vehicle architectures on the one hand and modular systems for drivetrains on the other. This setup gives us an unparalleled level of flexibility in a global context,” said BMW’s Chief of Development.
That said, things are looking electric for BMW’s future. With the recent announcement that M models will also get some sort of hybrid tech on board, we can only hope that things will evolve in the right direction and that the character of BMW cars will still be there in the years to come.
