Cheryl Tan

Jul 12, 20191 min

Drive Straight Out From Cyberpunk with BMW

Updated: Aug 18, 2021

Fascinated by the futuristic cars in the video? Here’s more about BMW, and how it’s transitioning from an automobile company to a tech company that makes automobiles.

NextGen is BMW’s motor show in Munich, Germany and BMW NextGen 2019 showcased some great concept cars, with autonomous driving at the forefront.

A separate unit called BMW i Ventures was set up and tasked to find, invest in and grow relevant tech start-ups in the car industry, to ensure BMW has first access to innovations and start up ideas out there.

The people at i Ventures also mentioned that the start-up culture enables faster implementation and execution of ideas, so change in those companies are fast and BMW wants its foot in them too.

Despite not releasing new electric cars since the BMW i3 in 2013, BMW has still sold more electric cars in Europe than any other car maker. The group is targeting to increase sales by more than 30% in each upcoming year, which looks to be a difficult target to meet considering the fact that fully electric cars are still more expensive to produce and thus to own.

With a promise to have 23 electric car models by 2023, BMW is giving customers a range of options to choose from, but in the end it still boils down to the support of the government. It’ll depend on whether the government is going to invest money in building more charging points, or even subsidise electric car ownership by introducing tax cuts.