BMW CEO Confirms City Car

Sections: Concept, Isetta Sep 16th, 2008 10 Comments

From Autoblog green and something we have been expecting for a while now.

This entire time, BMW was to decide on the fate of the city EV by the end of the year, and it seems that they have. BMW CEO Norbert Reithofer has confirmed that the Bavarian automaker will indeed go smaller, though we are not so sure it will wear the blue and white badge. Rather, the new vehicle could wear the Isetta badge made popular on microcars from the past. “It’ll be a car with a completely new look, with two engines available. One will be a very efficient combustion engine and the other will be a purely electric model,” says Reithofer.

This will be interesting to see and to see how well it performs against the MINI.

*The image above isn’t an official rendering. You can see more information about it on it’s Flickr page.

[ BMW CEO Confirms City Car with Electric Option ] Autobloggreen.com

Written By: db

JonPD

A good update attempt as the design for a new Isetta, lets hope BMW can nail something this sharp with the official design.

I believe this will be slotted in below the Mini. Now if BMW can add a proper shifting and braking car I think Smart will be in trouble. Not talking about performance in either of these as much as I am talking about efficiency. Would imagine somewhere in the 9k-14k area.
Gragop

Ahh you know what BMW, I appreciate the thought but go ahead and hold on to the design and just make more cars that are more fun to drive!
Ben

Agreed Gragop. I’m not against BMW building these, let’s just hope they really don’t but the BMW badge on there.
Gragop

@ Ben

Exactly. The original was a full-on BMW model and not some subsidiary brand competing with a different type of brand. Then again BMW didn’t really have anything near the image it has today – quite the opposite actually.

I thought the 1 series was supposed to be a sporty city car? Jeez – BMW Group is trying to compete in literally every market these days. They’ve got sports cars, luxury cars, armored cars, soon-to-be economy cars, near-luxury cars, ultra-luxury cars, ultra-sport cars…where does this end? Oh yeah – the BMW PAS vehicle hahaha
Nick

Ultra-sports cars? If BMW wanted to show it’s engineering capability they should come out with a super car that’s a hybrid / electric / alternative energy not some beefed up electric scooter like every other auto manufacturer plans on producing
http://bimmerfile.com Michael

Gragop- BMW needs to meet Cafe just like every other brand and high power cars will not help the situation, they NEED this to stay profitable and efficient. When people in the US wake up and realize that people in the city do not need behemoths this will be an option, future government regs will almost require this as an option.

Nick- I have heard for some time that BMW will not jump on the tradition super-car bandwagon and that when they announce their version it will change the way people look at supercars, not going to go into too much detail but how does Zero emissions sound? And no it is not that M0 mock design that was floating around months ago and was removed for copy right violations…. hmmm I wonder why?
Gragop

My point is that BMW may be growing too big for it’s britches in the near future.
Nick

Michael, A Zero emissions car sounds sweet (see H20 racer), I am wondering if BMW is now shifting from hyrdogen power to electricity to power it’s future cars?
http://Sonyrumors.net illegalprelude

Im with Nick on this. BMW is in an odd spot. Everybody is shifting to Hybrids because its such a easy transition compared to investing in Hydrogen witch I think is the key long term. I wish more companies would care long term and not “ohhh Here is our Hybrid, look an extra 2MPG!”
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