BMW Neue Klasse - on the right track?

Whatever exactly BMW’s Neue Klasse movement ends up being, it seems to have BMW headed back on the right track. Hopefully…

First off – there’s the BMW Neue Klasse design language…

The design team behind the Neue Klasse project obviously freaking gets it! They understand BMW’s legacy & iconic design elements, and they are successfully honoring it & applying it to BMW’s future. I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but c’mon, some of the current BMW designs have gone off the rails. Especially the EVs. And it’s time to steer that ship back on course.

Next, BMW is trademarking simpler model names…

It seems BMW understands their model names have also gone astray. And they’re showing plans to return back to a clear naming structure with less confusion. Thank God, because today, BMW model names are a total mess, with ‘xDrives’, X’s & M’s getting thrown all over the place. Not to mention ‘i’, which now refers to electric variants. We’ll find out soon enough how it ultimately shakes out, but it can’t get any worse. Shoot I probably shouldn’t have said that.

EVs threw a grenade at the automotive industry…

And as a result, a lot of things (and people) got really, really stupid. But it seems that maybe even amidst the chaos of an EV feeding-frenzy, BMW is refocusing back to their True North.

Yes this Neue Klasse project is EV based. And EVs are not something most enthusiasts want. It’s not what we envision when we envision “The Ultimate Driving Machine”. But the real problem is: The way EVs were presented to us. EVs have been pushed on consumers in a woke, misinformed, manipulative way… that attempts to force compliance, remove choice, and remove the driver. And because of that, EVs have quickly turned into a flashcard-example of everything that car enthusiasts hate about where the automotive industry is going.

But from the ashes, often come the greatest opportunities to unify…

To create a movement, and a genuine/earned fanbase. With the Neue Klasse concept, it looks like BMW is potentially approaching the future like BMW again. And for that, I’m optimistic & hopeful. There is a real opportunity here for BMW to once again do something iconic. However… I just can’t get past what Oliver Zipse, Chairman of the Board of Management of BMW AG recently said,

“A circular economy is our vision of the longterm.”

I hadn’t heard that term before, so I did a little research. And a ‘circular economy’ is rooted in the idea of sharing, leasing, reusing, etc. It’s ‘an economy’ where the players at the top find a way to take a chunk of everyone’s paycheck every month… forever. Good for them, but bad for the customer, no matter how they spin it to you.

It sounds like what someone would say…

If they wanted the car industry to mirror the mobile phone industry. Where a customer leases the new model & turns it back in for the next one, while the manufacturer keeps & recycles the resources, and the customer pays forever while never actually owning anything.

Not only that, but when it comes to car culture & the automotive aftermarket, there seems to be no place for it in a circular economy. And when you combine that with the tip of the iceberg hint-hint that BMW was actually trying (and failed) to charge a subscription for customers to be able to activate their own heated seats… it really shows a much more pessimistic glimpse into BMW’s underlying future intentions. So I’d guess you could say I’m optimistic… but extremely cautious at this point. There’s a lot of good in BMW right now, and it needs to weed out the bad. They need to show us that they’re on the same side as their fanbase.