— upends old engineering assumptions. E.g., that an EV based on a modified ICE platform couldn’t be great, simply by dint of those shared genes. Or, that an EV built on a stand-alone electric architecture must be, that generically styled dud of the ongoing electric revolution, for evidence to the contrary).
“We’ve gotten some flak for not committing to that,” said BMW spokesman Tom Plucinsky. “We think, and we’ve said, that the market worldwide will eventually go electric, and Neue Klasse is the next step towards that. But in the shorter term, we need the flexibility.”There are certainly some pros of stand-alone electric architectures, including on the brilliant-driving.
“10 years is a very short time in automotive terms, with our seven-year product cycles. There are things you just can’t just turn around and change.”