BMW's flexibility now the industry standard to survive EV reality

Just ahead of his elevation to the position of CEO at BMW in 2019, then production head Oliver Zipse spoke at an event at the Mini plant in Oxford about the need for caution when it came to EVs.

“Flexibility is key,” he told journalists. “If we predict the success of [the BMW] 3 Series, we can be pretty much spot-on. To predict electromobility is much more difficult.”

Five years later, BMW is reaping the rewards of its more circumspect strategy. In July, the company actually sold more electric cars in Europe than the global EV leader Tesla, according to market research firm Jato Dynamics. 

But BMW’s EVs are even today still just adapted versions of combustion-engined models, built on the same production lines.