BMW wants 7 million electrified vehicles on the road before 2030

BMW Group’s sustainability goals aimed at putting more than seven million vehicles with electrified drive systems on the road worldwide by 2030, two-thirds of them all-electric variants.

Ten-year plan

With a ten-year plan for sustainability, the BMW Group wants to underscore its commitment to the goals of the Paris climate agreement, the main focus being on the expansion of electric mobility.

Today, the BMW and Mini brands featuring all-electric and plug-in hybrid drive systems already account for approximately 13,3% of all new registrations Europe-wide (source: IHS Markit New Registrations July 2020 Report).

This corresponds to 1,5-fold of the average share of all brands, which is around 8 percent. The company expects this figure to rise to a quarter by 2021, to a third by 2025, and 50 percent by 2030.

Pandemic-related

Vehicles of the group featuring electrified drive systems are now offered in 74 markets worldwide, where more than 500 000 electrified vehicles were sold by 2019.

By the end of 2021, this figure will probably rise to over a million. Despite pandemic-related restrictions, more vehicles from the BMW Group were sold during the first half of 2020 than in the corresponding previous-year period.

As a result of the massive expansion of electric mobility, emissions produced by BMW Group vehicles per kilometer driven will be reduced by around 40 percent by the year 2030.

‘Power of Choice’

The current model offensive is paving the way toward this goal, with the company following the ‘Power of Choice’ approach to taking account of customer needs and legal requirements on the global automotive markets.

The BMW X3 is the first model available either with gasoline and diesel engines including 48-volt mild-hybrid technology, with a plug-in hybrid drive system, or all-electric drive system. As of 2021, this fifth generation of BMW eDrive technology will also be deployed in the specific electric models BMW i4 and BMW iNEXT.

In the future, further series models with electrified and with conventional drive systems will be built on a single production line. For example, the next generation of luxury sedans of the BMW 7 Series will also be offered as a purely electric model variant.

Also, the high-volume series BMW 5 and BMW X1 will be brought to market not only with conventional internal combustion engines and plug-in hybrid systems but also with all-electric drive units.

Focusing on the entire value chain

Today, the total environmental impact of a plug-in hybrid model, known as the CO₂ footprint, is already significantly lower than that of a conventionally powered vehicle.

The BMW X1 xDrive25e, for example, achieves a 31 percent lower value than the corresponding gasoline-driven model when using charging current from the EU electricity mix over its complete life cycle. If the vehicle uses green electricity exclusively over its entire service life, the CO₂ footprint is 55 percent lower.

Rare-earth metals

For the future, the BMW Group is developing, among other things, a sustainable, reusable material cycle for battery cells. The key commodities cobalt and lithium originate exclusively from suppliers who comply with stringent standards as regards ecological and social sustainability.

The electric motor of the latest BMW eDrive generation is produced without raw materials from so-called rare-earth metals. As a result, around 10 million tons of CO₂ emissions will be avoided over the next ten years.

Overall, from this year, all of the BMW Group’s production locations worldwide will be supplied with 100 percent green electricity. The company will also substantially increase the proportion of secondary materials used in their new vehicles.

Storage units

In the future, the further use and recycling of high-voltage batteries will become of major importance. After being used in vehicles with electrified drive systems, they can serve as stationary storage units for wind and solar power, which is currently the case on the premises of the BMW Leipzig plant.

The efficient recycling of raw materials does not follow until after this. While a recycling quota of 50 percent is currently demanded Europe-wide, the BMW Group and the German recycling specialist Duesenfeld have jointly developed a process with which a recycling quota of more than 95 percent is planned – including graphite and electrolyte.