View Single Post
      12-12-2018, 12:13 PM   #36
mkoesel
Moderator
United_States
7506
Rep
19,370
Posts

Drives: No BMW for now
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Canton, MI

iTrader: (1)

Quote:
Originally Posted by bradleyland View Post
Put another way, platform sharing between the ATS and the Camaro is relatively straight forward because of the vast commonalities between the cars. To pick one particular facet, going full EV presents packaging opportunities that are simply impossible with ICE drivelines. By sharing the platform, you abandon these opportunities.
Well said. I agree with you - EVs built on clean sheet architectures are, at some point, likely to make legacy EVs built on adapted ICE platforms look downright silly. That being said, have we arrived at that point yet?

Here's a Model 3 "body-in-white":



Here's CLAR:



Now obviously this is a grossly high level comparison. But I don't think we can look at these two and declare that BMW is completely out of their league trying to "bend" CLAR into a Tesla fighter. Disagree?

True, these diagrams don't show the motor placement and batteries. But we already know BMW intends to put the battery in the floor "skateboard-style" just like Tesla, and they can scale to some 80kWh or more.

Like I say - I agree with you that BMW's approach is a compromise and has risks. Indeed, it seems a shame that they sort of squandered time and resources on the i3 platform that once held such promise, yet will, more than likely, not be reused any time soon if ever. Perhaps they could have instead iterated on it to arrive at a truly reusable EV platform like VAG and Mercedes already have. Still, I don't know if we should count BMW out just yet.

Oh, and just to be clear, I think the Wired article is laughably FUD-y and rather uncharacteristically amateur-ish for that publication. Obvious click bait is obvious.
Appreciate 2