Lou Ann Hammond of drivingthenation.com recently spent some time with BMW of North America's CEO Ludwig Willisch talking about the i3. One thing I found interesting is Willisch said that BMW has tradmarked all of the numbers from i3 through i9 for the use of future vehicles. I had always heard they had tradmarked i1 through i9, and didn't start at i3 as Willisch indicated. A simple trademark search reveals BMW does hold the trademark for all the names from i1 through i9. So either Ludwig made a simple mistake, or perhaps he slipped and let out the fact that BMW doesn't have any plans to ever produce an i1 or i2. This of course isn't earth-shattering news, I just found it interesting that he indicated that the reserved names start at the number 3.
The other thing I enjoyed was all of the MINI-E and ActiveE footage in the video is of me driving my old cars. You see me plugging in at my restaurant, driving the MINI-E around in New York City and driving my ActiveE up my driveway at home. Willisch also talks about the dealers being excited about carrying the i brand. That's good news to hear because as with other manufacturers that introduce electric cars, BMW has struggled a bit so far to get the dealers up to speed with these new vehicles. They are definitely doing work behind the scenes to improve this, but there is still a lot to do to get their client advisers ready to embrace the i3. It's going to take some time, but I'm happy to report progress is definitely being made. Enjoy the clip!
Hat tip to InsideEVs.com for finding the video.
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- Monday, September 22, 2014
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