BMW’s $150,000 ‘Electric’ Car Sales Crater

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Oct 30, 6:19AM EDT · Published Oct 29, 8:12AM EDT

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BMW has been in the high-end “electric” car business for some time. Its BMW i8, a sports supercar, which sells for $150,000, is really a hybrid. BMW sells about 50 units a month, and those sales are collapsing.

BMW has not offered any explanation why sales of the i8 coupe have imploded. BMW has only sold 331 of them in the first nine months of 2017, versus 1.089 in the same period a year ago — a drop of 70%.

BMW calls the i8 an “electrified vehicle,” which means in reality it is a hybrid. For wealthy buyers who want a real high-end electric vehicle sports car, this will not do. BMW promotes the engine configuration:

When a car looks this fast, it better live up to its appearance. The BMW i8 does exactly this with its innovative electric motor that sits on the front axle and the TwinPower Turbo 3-cylinder engine that drives the rear axle. When combined, they deliver a total output of 357 horsepower, 420 lb-ft of torque, and can reach 0 to 60 mph in 4.2 seconds.

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Even though the charging system for one engine works similarly to a Tesla, the three-cylinder engine makes the car both gas-powered and electric.

Without debate, the i8 is a supercar. It has an extraordinarily luxurious interior, futuristic construction with some parts of the car build from carbon fiber, and a zero to 60 mph performance of 4.2 seconds.

What are people in the market likely to buy if they bypass the hybrid i8 because they want a fully electric car? Probably the high-end Tesla Model S, the P100D. The $135,000 car has comparable features to the BMW i8 and has a zero to 60 mph performance of 2.5 seconds.

Like every other major car company, BMW has ambitious electric car plans and aspirations. The i8 has been a very poor start, so BMW has a long way to go.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.