Executives are not the development team, and there's no word on whether actual EV engineers have defected as well. This really isn't surprising given the amount of poaching going on in the market these days between Tesla, Faraday, various VC-backed startups, and the upcoming China/emerging market players. Given the choice to get a better salary and actually work on a product millions of people might want instead of slogging away on a product line that BMW clearly doesn't care much about, these moves really aren't unexpected.
However in many cases they are the senior engineers of the development team. In this case the defection included executives who developed the i8 plug-in hybrid sports car and the electric powertrains for the i-series.
Not really. These big corporations have between 4-5 hierarchy levels. All people that are actually performing the engineering are on the lowest level - whether they are junior or senior engineers. And often even they are not aware of the details, because the actual engineering work is contracted. The next level are team leaders, which are only rarely involved in the development work. And the executives the article talks about are probably even 2 levels higher up. So maybe they lost some coordinators with a good vision, but not really the development team or technical knowledge.
This is true most of the time, but it might be that the electric car projects were handled as skunkworks. That's often the only way, for a very established incumbent, to protect substantial innovation attempts from corporate managers.
If that was the case, it's not unlikely that the management had genuine technical legitimacy. And that they're easy to poach, with a promise that their technical achievements won't be nullified by corporate politics.
(that's pure speculation, I have no insider info from BMW)
Even if the executives in question just spent their time dealing with coordinating efforts today, it's not unreasonable that they where doing real engineering 5 years ago when the development work was being done. The US might be different, but in Europe you generally don't become an executive in charge of a major engineering project without having earned your proverbial dues.
Disclaimer: I am located in Europe, working in the discussed industry and have spent the major time of my professional career at an automotive OEM (although not BMW).
I'm can totally acknowledge that most executives there have an engineering background (by degree) and started in an engineering position.
But for lots of them this point of their career is far behind them (>> 5 years), the field that they have actually worked on might not match their current position or that technology isn't even relevant any more. Executives that have worked as engineers in some mechanical field in the 90s and are now responsible for some cloud software or automated driving technology development (without any kind of SW knowledge) are not uncommon. It might make sense for the companies - but I also would not label these as the "development team" with the deep technical know-how.
Having worked my way a little up the engineer management chain, I have seen how easily one can lose the "pulse" of an engineering project if you are not day to day immersed in it. I would get a good sense of what the team was doing was on the right track or not but lose a lot of the details and context since I don't deal with it day by day. I had to rely on trusted reports to feed me the right data. I think if you move just one or two level up the management chain you lose all context of what is going on and are just parroting things back and forth. Kind of why I decided to step down a little.
Did they actually help design it? This wasn't clear from the article. I ask as often in large corporations the work of many individual contributors is associated to the management.
Iirc it's fairly common for car manufacturers to recruit executives from the engineering ranks. In fact I'd say it's fairly common in Germany in general to recruit what would be MBAs in other countries from the pool of people with engineering backgrounds (especially in mechanical engineering).
Especially in Europe, where companies are more likely to promote and train management from within rather than import freshly minted MBAs, compare to the US.
Sensationalist clickbait title. There's mention of 4 i-series executives leaving (BMW has over 100,000 employees), which is somewhat expected, given that the article mentions that i sales haven't been stellar.
True, I haven't seen too many i models on the streets, but I haven't seen too many of competitor's electric models either.
So the market is still not quite ready for them and the manufacturers, I guess, are wary of betting it all on the electric card.
Of course there'll be people moving from company to company, just like people from Apple move to Google and vice-versa and it's normal, but the tone of this article is like "BMW is collapsing and everyone is running for their lives... to China".
Why is this even in the news ?
Press is so unreliable and sensationalist these days .. Or has it always been like this ?
I don't think this is sensationalist or clickbait at all.
If I were a competitor trying to steal away an entire division, this is exactly how I'd start.
You think the four departed executives haven't already texted senior engineers saying, "let's talk in the next couple weeks"?
Generally speaking, the big considerations for engineers thinking about moving to a competitor are whether the business unit they'd be going to has a valid mission, good funding, and (perhaps most importantly) room to maneuver under leaders in whom the organization has invested and who have political clout to get stuff done.
Making a big splash by hiring four of the most accomplished guys in the electric cars game is an excellent way to signal that their new home takes this seriously. Expect engineers to follow.
Chinese "Future Mobility Corp" is still a wild shot in the air
Not really, Tencent is extremely famous, it's like Google here. You may not be aware that literally most vehicles on the road here in China are electric already (though most are bikes, there are also buses, taxis and tractors).
This. About 6 months ago we had a VP leave to a nearby firm. He was well regarded as a good manager, and has managed to siphon off 8 or 9 of the best people in IT.
> True, I haven't seen too many i models on the streets, but I haven't seen too many of competitor's electric models either.
Anecdotes. I see Teslas all the time. Neither of us is seeing a representative sample.
> So the market is still not quite ready for them
Tesla has 325,000 preorders.
> wary of betting it all on the electric card
They don't have much choice about how much to bet. The US government has mandated a certain percentage of their sales be low-emission vehicles by 2017.
> Why is this even in the news
It tells us that the I Series is a failed/failing product line and that Future is giving better incentives to electric-vehicle executives.
> Or has it always been like this
It has always been like this. In fact, it used to be much worse (see: yellow journalism and William Randolph Hearst).
Another anecdote: Drive Now (carsharing corp) has i3 in its fleet so you see a decent number of them in large German cities (like Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne), definitely more often than Teslas:
A lot of facilities have a need to reduce local air pollution. That's why you see construction sites and ports using biodiesel, and airports providing electric plugins for parked planes, instead of using diesel generators.
I have no idea if this airport is under such a mandate, but it wouldn't be surprising.
> > True, I haven't seen too many i models on the streets, but I haven't seen too many of competitor's electric models either.
> Anecdotes. I see Teslas all the time. Neither of us is seeing a representative sample.
I have seen only 3 Teslas on the road in my lifetime, besides some promo by the Tesla store. 2 of them just last weekend on the Autobahn and they where slow as a turtle with about 120 km/h. I was going by with about 180 km/h.
> > So the market is still not quite ready for them
> Tesla has 325,000 preorders.
Funfact: Nissan has already sold and delivered much more Leaf (>1 Million) than Tesla will produce by 2020. But everybody talks about Tesla as the game changer.
I travel all over the world and have seen literally thousands of them myself. In NYC/SF/LA area, a day doesn't go by where I don't see at least a few during the course of the day. I saw 2 in Nashville, TN area two weeks ago. I saw 4 in Dubai last week and 1 in Abu Dhabi. I've seen them in England, Amsterdam, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Czech Republic, Canada, and more in the past two years.
It's likely I see them more because I'm looking for them subconsciously (I think in part because I want one, just can't justify owning one as I rarely drive at home in NYC) and you just don't care. What your brain/eyes "see" is very heavily biased on a personal level.
> I have seen only 3 Teslas on the road in my lifetime, besides some promo by the Tesla store.
Like he said, anecdote. I guarantee I'll see more than 3 teslas when I walk to the metro station later today when I leave work. I live in Copenhagen. See, anecdotes go both ways and prove nothing.
> I have seen only 3 Teslas on the road in my lifetime, besides some promo by the Tesla store. 2 of them just last weekend on the Autobahn and they where slow as a turtle with about 120 km/h. I was going by with about 180 km/h.
I see a Tesla almost every day - it's parked outside of the office. There are at least two more that can be spotted on the grounds of University I went to. When I was in Norway last year, I played the game of "spot the Tesla". I counted 13+ over the course few days.
I've seen exactly the same number of Teslas as BMW i series - three! But then again in the same time period I've seen way more Lamborghinis & Ferraris and see Bentleys, Astons and Maseratis daily.
Washington D.C. and the companies in the NOVA area in general have excellent policies regarding electric cars. You can take the HOV lane to work, and there are free electrical charging stations at the office parks and in public garages in many areas (Reston, for example.)
I see multiple Teslas daily, both the Model S and the older roadsters. I occasionally see a BMW i8, and there's an i3 on my block. But, I've also seen electric prototypes on the roads around here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_1-litre_car) of which there are only a few hundred in the world, so YMMV.
As a long time BMW fan who has a M3 on order, it really is kind of sad to see that the company is becoming less and less inspired and more and more focused on short term shareholder happiness.
One one hand, the company is completely ditching its enthusiast root, at least within its main non-M lineups. The current generation 3 series is one of the worst offenders at this. In order to pursue mass market profitability, the 3 series has been watered down, its steering became heavily assisted electric systems, its suspension is tuned for comfort for a more "floaty" feel, its interior looks good in photos but are filled with cheap plastic everywhere to save cost. Its brakes no longer bite as hard because BMW doesn't want to replace too many rotors under their maintenance plane. The old king of sports sedans now drives like an overpriced and under-equipped Accord with worse reliability but faster acceleration.
On the other hand their lineups are exploding like Samsung's cellphone lines 5 years ago. Just in the U.S. market there is the 2, 3, 3GT, 3 ActiveHybrid, 4, 4GC, 5, 5GT, 5 ActiveHybrid, 6, 6GC, 7 series, then there is the X1, X3, X4, X5, X6, Z4, and then there is the M2, M3, M4, M5, M6, M5 GC, and X5 M, X6 M. Then there is the i3 and i8. They are really trying to go for market share, but are losing leadership positions in many market sectors that they used to completely dominate (ATS-V now drives better than a M3, C class now is just as sporty and way more luxurious than a 3 series).
And now they are barely dangling their feet in the EV front, while Tesla is charging ahead full speed (pun intended). M division is still doing good work technically, but even them are lost in the "spec game" and their new cars are all faster but less fun to drive than their predecessors.
My advice to BMW: Kill the i division, don't make EV a freaking hobby, do a serious EV within your main line-up and heavily push it. Don't be afraid to give it a sports tuned suspension with heavy and precise steering, add some of that old BMW magic back. Even if it doesn't become profitable in the short term it will create a halo effect for the whole company. Otherwise it's only a matter of time that the old school enthusiasts completely abandon you and the newer generations go chase after Teslas.
>My advice to BMW: Kill the i division, don't make EV a freaking hobby, do a serious EV within your main line-up and heavily push it.
Make an all-electric version of the 3, 5 series and X series to go toe-to-toe with Tesla directly, instead of watered down hybrids with shit range under a non-mainstream product line.
Additionally, Audi's (under the VW umbrella not BMW group) is "Vorsprung durch Technik", which is used in most of their non-US marketing. It translates as "Progress through innovation", if they were serious about this they would have taken the EV market much more seriously by now.
The i8 isn't messing around. It's a 0-60 in 3.6 second 29 mpg car, with a completely different design than Tesla. It's a genuine production vehicle, not a concept.
That's not too bad for a stodgy old company. Large ships turn slowly, and sometimes it takes a while for management to see the writing on the wall.
I don't know how the i3 drives, but I was short of shocked at how ugly (err maybe I should say quirky) the car looked - it looks like a toaster - and the two toned paint jobs it seems to often come with is even more of a head scratcher. It may perform well, and actually be a useful form factor - but IMHO the look of it is basically guaranteed to further limit the appeal of that product to a even smaller sub-group of the people who would consider electric in the first place.
I wonder if the i8 has the opposite problem - it looks lovely to me, but is a fairly radical design and again you might be turning away people who want an electric option, but don't necessarily want to call blaring attention to themselves.
Tesla has a problem where they don't have the cash on hand to build that production line quickly, nor have the equipment on site or people trained to use it for the capacity they will need.
BMW's i3 and i8 are both attempts at not only testing electrification but beyond that they went after materials testing and packaging. As in, the i3 was a moon shot in materials technology and its battery pack is actually quite serviceable.
While I know everyone loves to toot the Tesla horn the real problem that hit the other car makers was GM. GM because showed what having established relationship with suppliers and a wealth of in house knowledge can do in short order. GM is bringing a 200+ mile range EV to the market THIS YEAR, not late 2017, 2018 or whenever.
That car, the Bolt, has basically obsoleted every sub 100 and even sub 120 range EV over night. GM's supposed battery costs are lower than projections from Tesla's gigafactory
I think the problem is the needs for the Fun To Drive market and the Driving Appliance market have separated so much that you can't fit both markets into a single model anymore. Through the E46 era (early 2000s) you could have a single car which you would drive to work and which you could take to a track. The E90 (late 2000s), and rapidly increasing into the F30s (2010s), people want so many comfort, automation, and entertainment features in their Driving Appliances that would cause any Fun To Drive buyer to immediately reject the car out of hand. The Driving Appliance market is vastly larger than the Fun To Drive market, so it's clear where you're going to focus the bulk of your effort.
I think we're shortly going to reach a point where driving enthusiasts have to have two vehicles. One to drive on the roads and one to drive for fun. I've already reached that point, myself. I won't own any vehicle newer than the early 2010s unless it is fully self-driving.
Deal killers: fewer than 3 pedals; any touch screen controls; any loading screens. It is incredibly hard to find a fun, modern car that avoids all of those deal killers.
I've owned a single 335 since 2009. It drives/handles beautifully. It's hard to describe being able to feel the surface of the road through the suspension and into steering wheel. I've driven the new ones and feel less in control and that special road feel is gone. My 3's interior is certainly spartan, but well made. After 6 years of ownership on crappy Midwestern roads, my interior is still solid without a single squeak or rattle. The new one's I've driven look like "cheap fancy" to me, and can imagine all that plastic is going to warp into a squeaky rattly mess after a few years. I've already decided my next vehicle will be a Tesla.
That's exactly my experience as well. I transitioned from a 2007 335 to a 2013 335i because I wanted new tech and warranty. But I miss the old car's driving dynamics every single day. I'm getting a M3 next because it's been my highschool dream car and still retains a bit of that BMW magic, but the one after next? Probably a Model S for daily with a Porsche Boxster for weekend fun.
There was an inflection point with the E46 3er when sales passed those of the Ford Mondeo. The formerly boring-brand Ford is now seen as the niche interest for the manager-with-family who likes a little driving excitement and the BMW is a standard rep mobile!
I've a BMW i3. I think the manufacturer said that the majority of people buying the i3 had never been BMW drivers before. Certainly true in my case. It's a perfect city car, and good for my 70 mile commute. The REx makes it practical for long distances (by EU standards).
That said, I doubt I'd buy another BMW. Over-priced, poor apps, crappy in-car computer, every halfway decent option comes at a ridiculous price, maddening missing options (no heated steering wheel!), and a UI that's basically junk.
I don't know if that's reflective of the general BMW "way" - reading online it seems to be - but it's like dealing with a company from the dark ages.
BMW have proven that they can build and design electric vehicles. They now need to concentrate on why people don't want to buy into their brand. Maybe they can make it as an Apple - ultra-expensive luxury for people willing to turn a blind eye to imperfections - or maybe they need to concentrate on a superior user-experience from purchase to drive.
The tech is there and evolving - it is just the company which is stagnating.
I've a BMW i3. I think the manufacturer said that the majority of people buying the i3 had never been BMW drivers before. . . . Over-priced
It mostly seems to be overpriced, though perhaps tax incentives and gas costs make it more competitive in Europe. In the U.S., it's hard to imagine buying one over a Nissan Leaf or Chevy Volt (especially because the 2016 Volts are getting stellar reviews).
To claify the line before that quote says: "But a long-awaited third model in the i-series won’t be launched before 2020"
That's 5+ years for a new model. It's say that is pretty damn slow for car manufacturers that tend to release a model upgrade per year. Especially given ever developing tech position of electric.
Maybe they are expecting the development to be done in Audi/Porshe companies and BMW will tag along. I find it hard to believe BMW management dont see (and plan for) where the market is clearly going.
While a long time, five years doesn't sound excessively long to develop an entire new model, distinct from an upgrade to one of the existing lineups. As an example, look at the amount of time the Tesla Model 3 was in development and still remaining until the first deliveries.
Not defending BMW; they seem to have missed the boat in this iteration. Perhaps they'll be able to find their way, but they'll have to play catch-up for a while.
The i8 (the second i-line car) was released in june 2014, which means that it'd be 6 years between the i8 and a third car. There were 4 years between the Tesla Roadster and Model S, 3 between Model S and Model X and probably 2-3 between Model X and Model 3.
If the next car in the i-line is planned for 2020, I understand that these 'young people' think it's slow. And it's obvious that it isn't a priority for BMW.
So I'm not clear if their complaint was slow model development cycles or new models coming to market. One is, it takes us too long to go from idea to off the line, the other is we don't have enough new car ideas.
> That's 5+ years for a new model. It's say that is pretty damn slow for car manufacturers that tend to release a model upgrade per year.
The automotive industry has notoriously long lead times. The second sentence does not contradict the first: they release yearly model upgrades, but each upgrade takes 5 years (more or less) to develop. In other words, 2018 models are pretty much finalized today
Retail deliveries for the i8 started in June 2014, so presumably they had been working on a new version for two years already; unless the team was diluted to provide insight to their other teams for BMW's iPerformance effort to include technology from their i vehicles to hybrid variants of older series.
Does "launch" have a specific meaning in this context, that it's always the announcement of the final design, or the first showing at Frankfurt, or when it hits dealers?
> damn slow for car manufacturers that tend to release a model upgrade per year
That's not true. There are facelifts every few years and new models take a few more years. And even new models are often based on the older model in many ways.
Engineering the first iPhone is a completely different kind of challenge to engineering an EV - probably a lot easier in most ways that matter.
For the iPhone, it was a relatively fresh niche, so the minimum quality bar was very low (and considering how much better smartphones have gotten, you could argue that early models intentionally left a lot of room to improve). EV cars need to compete not only with "normal" cars, but also with generations of tesla's, and a wide variety of hybrids, including plug-ins that can to some extent provide the same benefits. A new entry needs to be much more competitive.
Then, the ingredients to a smartphone are fairly simple, and it doesn't actually matter that much exactly what you do with them. Anything vaguely affordable with a touchscreen and internet essentially works - and without much competition that means there would have been many paths to success. By contrast, there are quite a few physical limits cars run up against that make the details a lot more relevant (perhaps not if you'd have been developing the first car, but well...)
Cars have lots of regulatory issues and there is extensive safety testing. Even if this were trivial, it's likely still time consuming and may involve many iterations.
There is very little value in comparing the iPhone to an electric vehicle. Cars have more regulations (safety, emissions), more moving parts, larger teams working on them and cost 2 orders of magnitude more. A poorly designed phone is less likely to kill people.
At the same time, some argue that not just BMW but pretty much all of the German car manufacturers sort of missed the train on electric and are now still playing catch-up.
It's the autobahn. EV are great at acceleration, but abysmal at sustaining high speed. In Germany, a luxury sedan that has to "crawl" sub 100mph to make it to the next charger completely fails the accustomed status calculus that drives luxury sales.
Price-sensitive "reason over status" EVs that don't suffer that status hit from lacking high speed endurance are a much tougher nut to crack than status vehicles like the existing Tesla models. In this market segment, german carmakers are not failing significantly harder than everybody else.
Most people don't drive on the autobahn most of the time. And most of it has speed limits anyway. Even when you are using a part that has none, you may not be able to drive that fast due to traffic. I don't know what kind of idea you have about this, but very few people will drive their vehicle at top speed even if it is possible. First of all, it becomes much more stressful to operate the car for an extended amount of time. Secondly, you can be held liable for accidents while driving at above the suggested speed of 130 km/h even when you are not at fault. There may be a few people who would consider this an argument but most won't consider this kind of thing.
Maybe i was not clear enough: i wasn't talking about why EV are impossible in Germany (they are not), i was talking about why the specific Tesla strategy of starting with a fast-looking luxury sedan (or a roadster, if you want to nitpick) and slowly working down from that would have been disastrous for german car makers. The main purpose of a luxury sedan is to project status and that just won't work so well if you have to get in line with the weakest of bread-and-butter cars on a cross country drive (which is a major use case in Germany, because there are no distances long enough to really get used to the american pattern of domestic flight + rental car).
> very few people will drive their vehicle at top speed even if it is possible
It's true, you rarely see a car in the Model S price range anywhere close to their top speed. They are just too fast for that, the lanes are starting to feel so damn narrow when you are approaching 200 km/h. A seasoned "business class" driver would rather put the car on cruise control at 180. But whenever traffic and local limitations are permitting, it is just as rare to see a really expensive car lurk along anywhere close to as slow as those 130. And depending on which part of the country you are driving in, these situations are far from rare.
That's a reason, not an excuse. Chinese electric car companies (to just choose a random example) don't have to worry about the autobahn as it's just one market segment out of the entire globe). German car companies seem to be setting themselves be set up to be disrupted as electric cars that aren't "good enough" slowly grow from the bottom up to be better in multiple dimensions.
I think reasons are a lot more interesting than excuses. Autobahn has been a highly effective marketing stunt for decades, now it's biting them back because it makes it quite difficult to do a top-down EV introduction like Tesla is doing.
Toyota also missed electrical cars. I guess they bet too heavy on their hybrid engines. It will be interesting how their Mirai model will sell, a fuel cell hydrogen-powered car that continue to use the hybrid technology.
There's a lot of hype and currently little real success for electric cars. But with this hype, I guess real success is just a matter of time.
The problem with probably all traditional carmakers is that pivoting to electric simply does not work well at that scale and you need to simultaneously develop experience with electric cars while maintaining your gasoline cash cow. Toyota used hybrid for this, BMW tried niche cars. None went all in.
Which is kind of odd as I recall the predominant opinion being that electric is more viable than hydrogen. Even with the advances and improvements in hydrogen-based vehicles, electric vehicles still took-ahead.
There was a video (http://youtu.be/uDr4L6BzpP8) posted recently discussing the manufacturing tech within the i3; absolutely fascinating - the general gist being how this car is the Model T of our time.
Perhaps it is a big loss or not that great; eitherway I believe the company will do just fine - they've set themselves up very well for the future unlike many of the other manufacturers in terms of brand, mobility, innovating / delivering on new tech / processes etc.
The way the traditional car makes are offering electric vehicles as a niche side product makes no sense. There's no conviction to it. Electric shouldn't be offered as an option, like a sunroof or convertible. Its the future. The i3 is marketed like 'here's a quirky car for weird people who dont like dinosaur juice'. No wonder staff would rather work for a startup. Go to a dealership and ask them about the electric range - the dealers dont give a shit.
Indeed. That's exactly why Tesla will win over any other car manufacturer. They treat it as "just another segment in the market", when they should be remaking all of their products as EVs.
When I see an article about the i series, I can't help saying: if they had just made a line of full electrics that look like other BMWs, they would sell far more of them. I'm sure these things appeal to some, but I can't be the only person who finds them hideous. Just because it's an electric car doesn't mean it needs to look like something out of Tron.
Been driving BMW's for the past 10 years. I'm not big into cars and try to avoid driving when I can, but as far as rides go those are nice vehicles. To get me to stay with the brand, BMW needs to bring to market a 5 series plug-in hybrid with more than a token green-wash electric motor within the next 18 months, and it doesn't look like they will be able to deliver.
Same here. Even though my current ___location frees me of the need of a car (public transport is ubiquitous in this city state) BMW has been the make that provided the cars I liked driving short and long distances most. While I'd certainly look at BMWs offering of cars if I ever need one again, right now I'm quite sure I'd opt for a Tesla, as I don't see BMW having a proper contender.
Ludicrously so. I was talking to an Uber driver there who said the high cost of car ownership (namely the COE - Certificate of Entitlement) makes owning a car simply for the sake of Uber driving to be generally uneconomical. Especially as the COE cost is due to rise substantially.
imo the i3 is too feeble, and the i8 is too weird or exotic. Tesla S is good, though expensive. Tesla 3 looks like a world beater. Why can't the Germans match that?
Because they ignored electric cars for decades, or just did half-hearted trials. BMW is actually way ahead of the other German manufacturers, but I doubt they will be able to compete with Tesla.
I am owner of different electric cars. I have an IT company so for us electric cars are more than a battery on wheels. It is a car you could put sensors on and do lots of stuff easily, like automatically drive and so on.
I don't consider BMW sales low. Quite the contrary. Read "The Innovation dilemma" to see what is happening here. Sales of electric are low compared to normal cars but they are extremely high for electric growing at an exponential rate.
So high that right now with the Tesla batteries alone in the next two years the price of lithium alone will double or triple, because the Gigafactory alone will produce in a year more batteries that are currently manufactured in the entire world today.
What is probably going to happen is that electric batteries need for cars will advance the development of new batteries that do not depend on lithium, like grapheme, because lithium availability is limited.
I suspect that EV-fanatic kids don't think much of the i8 -- it's a plug-in hybrid with weak all-electric performance. It would have made a great all-electric car.
I'm finding it hard to find any i series sales figures for anywhere but the US. But in the US last year they sold 11,000 - less than half of what Tesla sold. For pure EVs they took 3rd place behind Tesla and Nissan Leaf. Rumoured about 25,000 worldwide sales which is about half of Tesla's (rapidly growing) worldwide. The Leaf consistently takes second place after Tesla.
Heard the entire "i" program is a huge money losing offset so BMW can make the volumes they want of their highly profitable, yet gas-guzzling "M" versions.
Could someone explain to me how this works legally? Don't contracts have clauses in them to prevent people moving to a new job in the same industry or clauses that prevent people from taking old employees with them when they move to another company?
IANAL but, as far as I know, e.g. here in Italy things work like this: assuming you decide to leave your day job to found your own company meant to compete with the company you were working for, your former employer could theoretically sue you if you found your new company within 5 years of you leaving (at least this is what I remember). To work around this, you could pick a partner and make them the head of the company. This could also work in spite of non-compete clauses, which I think many companies consider as overkill anyway.
As far as laws preventing your from moving from a company to a competing one go, I really don't think we have anything like that.
Same goes with taking old employees with you if you move to another company.
Which is a Good Thing, if you ask me, because if people decide to walk away it's probably because they are sick of it or found something better/better paying/more interesting, and law preventing you from moving someplace better would be preposterous, IMHO.
Of course, this "lack of regulation" might have to do with the fact that the vast majority of contracts are of the collective type and not tailored to your particular company, meaning that you work under the same conditions as most of the other people doing your job.
According to my limited experience, a company drafting up its own contracts is a rare occurrence.
Not only are these clauses bad for employees, but the economy suffers as well. Preventing someone from moving within the same industry (assuming it would hold up in court) just means that knowledge and experience is thrown away. I can't imagine any industry benefitting from this, let alone our economy.
> Would it be a good idea to unionise for such things?
Does your boss have the same goals as you? Does your CEO care deeply about your personal progression and happiness?
If so, there's no need to join a union.
For most people, a union is an insurance policy against your employer turning against you. Providing legal and financial assistance when you need it most.
To summarise: if your employer has more lawyers than you do - join a union!
Loosing a few executives is expected for a product that's mature enough to be on the market. These guys no doubtedly got a ton of cash for defecting, but they may also learn if they try to come back that they will be considered tainted goods.
Very interesting, that German carmakers don't take e- mobility seriously. They have outdated concepts, lack of visions and deal with exhaust-emissions-tuning and irrelevant micro-improvements rather than out of the box thinking into the future. A paradigm shift is imminent. Goodbye Germaneering. Hello concepts that help making the world a better place. Thank God for guys like Elon Musk!
It might look weird at first. But it is a very capable and fun car for city driving. Some things like the doors might not be 'normal' but you will appreciate when using. The whole thing is very compact without being cramped inside. Super tight turning circle. Nice materials. If I was responsible for this car I would be very proud.
