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Originally Posted by HawkeyeGeoff
If you guys were a part of the automotive engineering community, this would make your pants tight. It's pretty remarkable from a packaging stand point. I bet there are compromises for sure though.
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The question in my mind is whether the compromises will impact the product in a way that consumers are sensitive to. For example, Tesla's cars have a trunk in the front. You can't do that if you wedge an E-Machine in where the engine used to be. That's a really simplistic example obviously, but what about the more esoteric differences that can result in very real impacts on performance? For example, what is the weight impact of such an architecture? I'm sure BMW are very focused on this, but flexibility often comes at the cost of weight.
Obviously we don't know the answers to these kinds of questions, but magazines like Wired are rarely attuned to the details that matter.
Put another way, I'm reminded of this comparison:
This is a knife, screwdriver, bottle opener, ruler, saw, corkscrew, pliers, clock, nail file, and much much more. It costs $425.
But what if I really only need to drive some philips head screws?
This is a $4 philips screwdriver. Sure, you can't cut things with it, but if you only need to drive screws, who cares how it cuts?
This is an extreme example, but it is the challenge BMW faces. Will customers be satisfied with a car built on a Swiss Army knife architecture, or will they gravitate to more focused designs, which skip any compromises and sells at a similar cost?
BMW's strategy here is one of risk avoidance. They're a small company, which makes committing to a dedicated EV platform extremely risky. If their timing is off even by a little bit, it could put the company at risk. So they're making engineering compromises to avoid risk. Everyone in the market does the same thing, but I'm a little concerned that BMW might have made some dangerous compromises in the process.