The Hindu Business Line : BMW to increase sales of ‘Efficient Dynamics’ vehicles to 8.3 lakh

Recently in Munich, Germany It was at the turn of the millennium, says, Dr Norbert Reithofer, the Chairman of the Board of Management of BMW AG, that the German car major re-focussed its R&D efforts onto environment protection. Though that was a time when umwelt freundlich (environment-friendly) was part of the automobile manufacturers’ lexicon, concerns over climate change had not yet rammed home as an inconvenient truth, as it has today.

The foundation laid then has proved to be fortuitous. Today, the R&D centre of BMW in Munich is the fountainhead of a host of umwelt freundlich technologies — high-precision injection, regenerative braking, auto-start-stop mechanism, electric steering and third-generation common rail (only for diesel vehicles), to name a few.

But the crownpiece of all the work is what BMW is doing in hydrogen-based technologies. The luxury-car major has already put about a 100 hydrogen-powered cars on the roads — driven primarily by BMW’s marquee customers — celebrities, politicians and decision makers. The hydrogen vehicles, whose emission are droplets of water, are nonetheless poorer in terms of performance — they can run as fast as 180 km per hour and accelerate to 100 km per hour in 9.1 seconds. “There is no issue in terms of performance,” stresses Dr Verena Schuler, Spokesperson on CSR and Sustainability.

Efficient Dynamics

The other technologies too, which BMW calls ‘Efficient Dynamics”, help in making the air more breathable. The auto-start-stop mechanism, for instance, shuts the engine off during longer idling and restarts once the foot hits the accelerator pedal, saving fuel.

Last year, BMW sold 4.5 lakh cars with Efficient Dynamics in Europe alone, about a third of all the cars the company produced. These vehicles (including 22 BMW and five Mini models) emit 140 grams of carbon-di-oxide less each kilometre.

According to Dr Reithofer, BMW expects to raise sales of Efficient Dynamics vehicles to 8.3lakh next year, roughly 80 per cent of all car sales in entire India. Because these vehicles consume 20 per cent less fuel, customers would save 150 million litres of fuel, and the world would save 3.73 lakh tonnes of carbon.

As part of the group’s strategy BMW would be introducing state-of-the-art low emission diesel cars in all the 50 US States this year. These cars would be as good as the hybrid vehicles, but €5,500 (Rs 3.4 lakh) less. But BMW is also working on a hybrid car, which it expects to launch next year.

“We are introducing the Efficient Dynamics technologies step-by-step into the whole fleet (models) and various regions. At the moment, the technology is standard in Europe — if customers buy 5 series, they would get Efficient Dynamics features automatically, for no increase in price. But there are some markets like the US where the sulphur-free fuel that is necessary for the lean operation of these new high-precision injection engines, is not yet on sale nationwide,” Dr Schuler said. As a logical sequence these models will be available in India based on fuel availability.