BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
This has a lot to do with culture. Microsoft had a mockup of an e-reader before the Kindle, but the powers that be in the company insisted that it should run Windows (not out of malice, but because that&#x27;s how they saw the world.) When Bezos, who, at the time, ran a giant bookstore, started his Kindle project, he put them on a secret team in a different building.<p>Car companies are run by people who love engines that burn gas. The notion that electric vehicles might be something more than compliance nightmares, that they might actually be better <i>cars</i> than gas-powered vehicles is foreign. It&#x27;s like the Microsoft execs saying &quot;of course the e-reader should also be able to open spreadsheets and what-not.&quot; Meanwhile, the Kindle is better as an e-reader because they started from the ground up.<p>Same thing with Tesla. (With whom, none of these companies would be talking about going electric.) They started from the ground up.<p>If BMW wanted to make money on electric vehicles, Tesla has proven that you can sell an $80-$100K+ electric car (with a ~$50K interior) with profitable unit economics. I&#x27;m pretty sure an electric 7-series would sell like hotcakes, and make money. Instead, you get the i3, which some people love, but it&#x27;s certainly an acquired taste, and the 3 series e, which I drove recently-- it has about 11 miles of electric range. ;( If they just made it all electric, I&#x27;d buy one tomorrow at the already high 3-series prices. But the culture isn&#x27;t there yet...