Yahoo Finance Electrified BMW M Cars Are Coming
BMW has already told us about its strategy to dramatically increase the number of electrified models it offers. Now we have some more details on how its high-performance-focused M division will move into this electron-propelled future. And the answer is cautiously.
“For sure, all M vehicles will be electrified by the end of the next decade, and that’s going to happen step by step,” M’s boss, Frank van Meel, told us at a media event in Spain. “The very important question is timing-what’s the right time for that? If you’re too late then you’re too late, but if you’re too early then you don’t have the straight-to-the-point technology. Look at today’s electrification components: They are quite heavy, and, for us as a motorsports company, overall vehicle weight and power-to-weight ratio is key.”
Despite this, Van Meel said, BMW’s newly developed modular electric motors could be used to lend assistance to future M-badged models.
“Without going too deep into details, if we do an M car in an electrified way, it should still drive like an M,” he said. “If you look at M3, we have had four-cylinder, six-cylinder, and a naturally aspirated, high-revving V-8. Now we have a turbocharged six, and there is always the question, Is this the right concept or the right technology [for the future], or is there another one? But the real question from our customers was whether the M3 was driving like an M3. I don’t really care if we use a [modular electric motor] or another configuration; it should drive like an M3 . . . The basic target is not so much the components of the technology itself. It’s more the philosophy.”
Interestingly, Van Meel said that some form of hybridization was considered to give the M4 GTS a performance boost, before M division opted to use a water-injection system, a technology he confirmed that we are likely to see used again in future M models. But while the current M5 has been switched to a rear-biased all-wheel-drive system with the ability to be switched to rear-wheel drive, Van Meel seemed to downplay the idea that the next-generation M3 or M4 would take the same path. “I’d say that people are quite happy with the [rear-wheel-drive] layout of the cars right now,” he said. “I don’t want to suggest that for now and forever it’s going to stay that way, but the only thing I can see right now is that rear-wheel drive suits the M3 and M4 perfectly and is very popular.”
The bigger problem, he admits, is going to be to deliver cars delivering M-appropriate thrills that are spun from the natively front-drive version of the Fifth Generation architecture, which we have been told will include the next 2-series: “We want to have a typical M feeling, which goes more naturally with rear-wheel drive. If you want to do that with front-wheel drive, I think that’s the biggest challenge you can have.”
The obvious solution would be to draw on the building-block nature of the modular architecture to add an electrically powered rear axle that would supplement conventional propulsion at the front. It’s an idea that, when suggested, produced a wry smile from Van Meel, but no formal answer.
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