The electric vehicle revolution continues to heat up, and while we’d love to be reporting on more of the electric models hitting the market in 2020, the fact is traditional automakers were a bit too slow for that. The truth is, there is much more energy and investment being put into models for 2021 and beyond. Audi and BMW both recently had announcements about investments for the coming years.
Audi
Photo by Kyle Field, CleanTechnica
Audi, part of now EV-aggressive Volkswagen Group, has set aside approximately €12 billion to put into e-mobility between 2020 and 2024. That’s a significant investment by any standard, but it’s worth noting that it comes from a pie of €37 billion for R&D in general. In other words, it’s just about one-third of planned investments from the automaker.
What will €12 billion provide? “This amount comprises investment in property, plant and equipment as well as research and development expenditure. The current planning reflects a significant improvement in investment and cost discipline, as well as the strong prioritization of investments in electric mobility,” an Audi press release states.
Whereas the Audi e-tron is the only fully electric model from Audi at the moment, the German company plans to have 20 fully electric models on the road by 2025 and another 10 hybrids added during the same timeframe. That’s a big rollout of plug-in vehicles in the coming months and years. It’s exactly this kind of diversity and backing from prominent traditional automakers that’s critical for the EV market’s continued strong growth.
BMW
Photo by Kyle Field, CleanTechnica
BMW, after bringing one of the first modern electric vehicles to market (the BMW i3), has shown us it didn’t understand how to proceed in the 21st century. The company has neglected to bring out serious EV competitors for years, instead heavily reliant on plug-in hybrids with small batteries to cut its emissions.
Eventually, it will have to get more fully electric cars into driveways, and one of those should be the iNEXT. The German automaker is now announcing a stage of investments for the funky BMW iNEXT to bring it to production in a couple of years.
“The BMW Group is investing around 400 million euros in its Dingolfing vehicle plant for production of the BMW iNEXT. In doing this, it is preparing for the manufacture of pure battery-electric and highly automated BMW cars at its largest European production location.”
Photo by Kyle Field, CleanTechnica
Will you be buying the BMW iNEXT? Do you know anyone who will?
Do you know anyone waiting for a new electric Audi?
We’ll have to wait for more details to see how this really plays out, but in the meantime, the good news is that these automakers are at least investing in EV model development and planning for production.
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