When BMW chairman Norbert Reithofer announced final year that “What the mobile telephone did for communication, electric mobility will do for individual mobility” and board member Peter Schwarzenbauer proclaimed that “never ahead of has the BMW Group been so proud to present a auto to the world” at the i3 launch, we weren’t skeptical, per say, merely unsurprised. What else would you count on a company that’s invested billions into a pair of new electric cars—the i3 and the i8—to say? A year on, BMW has assured us that the i vehicles are “selling properly,” but that might not be the case in Germany.
According to a report by kfz-betrieb, a newspaper that keeps extremely close ties to the automobile dealers in Germany, the i3 is not faring as effectively in its home market place as it is abroad. Right after 9 months of sales, dealers have sold just half of the autos they had been told to move. These figures even include sales delivered during the i3’s initial hype a dealer who requested anonymity for fear of repercussions has stated that the honeymoon period is most definitely more than.
Dealers have been capable to sell 1900 units considering that the starting of the year, a third of which came with the optional gasoline-fueled variety extender, says kfz-betrieb. That’s woefully short of the 5000 to 6000 units the 43 German “i agents” are supposed to sell ahead of the end of the year. This September has been the most disappointing month so far, with only 131 i3s discovering new properties. BMW is blaming long shipping instances of up to 6 months for the weak sales. “Dealers say they could sell a lot more automobiles than allocated,” Reithofer lately claimed, but as Kfz-betrieb notes: “He did not say which dealers.”
Internal bickering aside, BMW is resorting to unconventional techniques to jumpstart sales and providing potential German customers an i3 for €555 ($ 692) a month. That price involves a full collision waiver and a whopping 3333 kilometer (2071 miles) allotment. If the customer bites and outright purchases the vehicle, the original fees are reimbursed. It’s an fascinating strategy, one that nicely avoids conventional incentive measures like money on the hood, and we’ll be watching to see how it shakes out—who knows, if a comparable sales dilemma befalls BMW in other markets where the i3 is sold, this method could someday escape Germany.
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