BMW will announce within days that it has reached the 10,000 sales milestone for its green ‘i’ range.
Most of the sales are accounted for by the i3 electric vehicle/range extender hybrid, with the i8 petrol-electric hybrid supercar contributing only around 300 sales.
The sales achievement comes not long after reports Renault-Nissan was moving to slow production of lithium-ion battery packs because of sagging EV sales.
But BMW Group sales and marketing chief Ian Robertson told motoring.com.au that BMW was unwavering in its support of EVs.
However, he made it clear BMW Group saw it as a small and building part of the business, complemented by other more fuel-saving applications such as fuel cells and the widespread production introduction of hybridisation.
“We have broken through 10,000 sales, which we will announce in a press release in the next day or so,” Robertson said on the sidelines of the Paris motor show.
“We had a very strong September … and the running rate is over 100 cars per day now so the numbers are coming up.”
Robertson revealed that strong demand for i8 meant BMW was “moving some production slots around to build a few more i8s because the order bank is just too long”.
Robertson refused to be drawn on the implications for the expansion of the i range, which is said to already include plans for an i5 wagon and i9 supercar based on the i8, which is tipped to debut during the company’s centenary in 2016.
“The only thing I will tell you is we trademarked everything from i1 to i9,” he said. “You will have to wait and see.”
Renault-Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn has been an evangelist for EVs, with the Nissan LEAF on sale in Australia since 2012.
The $63,900 i3 goes on sale in Australia in November, while the i8, which will cost $299,000, launches in March 2015.
“We are absolutely convinced that zero-emission vehicles – and the most effective way of doing that is with electricity – are going to play an increasingly important role in the overall fleet,” said Robertson.
“Having said that, we always entered this with a cautious step-by-step approach.
“If I tell you we have sold around 1.5 million other cars this year then it is a small part of the business. But I think you can say confidently over the next five or six years there will be more and more hybridisation because we all need to have zero emissions in the cities around the world and we all need to meet fleet averages, whether they be in Europe, the USA or China.
“So zero emissions are coming and one thing for certain is we will continue to develop all the technologies and some new ones like fuel cells where we are pretty advanced with prototypes running on our relationship with Toyota.
“At the end of the day no-one knows what the splits will be in 2030 or 2040, so developing technology on a zero-emission basis is very much part of our business and will continue to be very much part of our business.”
All the latest news and video from the motoring.com.au team at the Paris motor show