BMW Loses Core Development Team to a Chinese Startup

Wall Street Journal reports of BMW AG losing its core development team over a startup named Future Mobility Corp, a company that is backed by Tencent Holdings. This means that the i3 and i8 electric vehicles will now be produced by a Chinese startup.

It all started last month when 20-year BMW veteran Carsten Breitfeld left the German automaker to be a chief executive of Future Mobility Corp. He is the man behind the development of the BMW i8 plug-in hybrid sports car. Now, there are three more executives who are crucial to the BMW i operations that are following suit.

The first one is Dirk Abendroth. He was responsible for the development of the BMW i Series’ electric powertrains. The next one is Benoit Jacob; BMW i’s head of design. The last one leaving BMW is Henrik Wenders, head of BMW i product management. They will all be moving to Future Mobility.

So far, BMW has no comment on the reason why these executives have left their posts. A good guess is the continued struggle of premium car manufacturers in selling their electric cars. They have exerted so much time, effort, and money in research and development and yet, cheaper electric cars from competitors continue to be born.

Two years after BMW has unveiled the BMW i3 and the i8, reportedly, sales have not been that good. The WSJ report said that BMW has slowed down the production because this isn’t the demand that they have forecasted in the past.

However, other reports also say that the BMW i cars are actually doing well. There were 24,057 i3 models and 5,456 i8 models sold. This is still a 66% increase in the sales of the BMW i division. Wieland Bruch, a BMW spokesman, even confirmed that the BMW i8 is the best-selling plug-in sports car.