BMW AG won't bring its first mass-produced electric car to market before 2013. Online and on the road, though, the luxury auto maker is already racing to drum up potential consumers.
BMW hopes the ActiveE, in New York Monday, shines on social-media.
Reuters
Its newest effort is an electric car-simulating smartphone application being promoted at the New York International Auto Show this week. Called BMW EVolve, the app lets drivers track how compatible their driving habits and daily traveling distances would be with a battery-powered electric vehicle, plus what they would save in potential fuel costs.
The app is just one move in a broader buzz-building campaign that BMW hopes will build demand for its first mass-produced all-electric city car, called the i3. "We need to attempt to understand [driver] behavior and create a culture first, and we need to start early and broad," said Rich Steinberg, BMW's North American electric car operations and strategy chief.
Auto makers typically only begin promoting new cars months before they go on sale, for fear a long buildup will cut into sales of existing models. But the uncertainty over how drivers will embrace the very different technology behind electric cars is turning the traditional marketing blueprint on its head.
BMW earlier this year launched a number of social media forums for electric-car enthusiasts and a four-part series of online documentaries featuring former astronaut Buzz Aldrin and other prominent people musing about the future of urban transportation. Later this year, it will begin delivering about 1,100 of an i3 pre-cursor, called the ActiveE, to U.S. and European test drivers who will be encouraged to tell neighbors, Facebook friends and anyone one else about their experiences driving it.
The German auto maker isn't alone in the approach. General Motors Co and Nissan Motor Co. began building buzz around the new Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf via Facebook, Twitter and other social media websites more than a year before those vehicles went on sale last year. In January, Ford streamed the unveiling of its Focus Electric, due to hit showroom floors in late 2011, over its Facebook page for electric car fans.
The grassroots push to establish electric cars is part of the auto industry's broader gamble that it can win over broad swaths of consumers who still worry about the cars' potential costs and whether battery power is sufficient to get them where they need to go.
Auto makers are pouring billions of dollars into developing electric cars, in part to meet ever-tougher emissions rules. Yet, according to a Consumer Electronics Association survey of U.S. drivers last year, 71% said they would fear being stranded with a dead battery and 59% said the current battery ranges of all-electric cars were too limiting for their driving needs.
"There will, of course, be a lot of first movers who buy electric cars, but at the end of the day, most consumers are going to ask: how much is this going to benefit my lifestyle?" asked Joe Kyriakoza, vice president of product and performance strategy at Jumpstart Automotive Group, an online auto marketing portal. "The marketing is going to have to focus on the real-life questions."
BMW says its taking its buzz-creating efforts a step further, by integrating what it gleans from them into the marketing and development of the i3 and other electric cars. Smartphone users who download BMW's new app, for instance, can feed their driving statistics into a main website that shows them how they and their fuel-savings compare with other drivers. BMW plans to collect the anonymous data on users' driving patterns to inform the design of its mass-market electric cars.
It has drawn insights from the online discussions of participants in its first series of electric car field trials, which began in the U.S. in mid-2009 and involved an electric version of its Mini-brand car, dubbed the Mini E. On a much-frequented Facebook page that Mini E participants set up on their own, for instance, a common refrain was how much colder weather limited battery range. "The temperature does have a huge effect," remarked one driver. "Even when I compare 70 degree [Fahrenheit] weather to 60 degree weather."
As a result, BMW said it developed its second test electric car, the ActiveE, with liquid cooling to better regulate the battery's response to temperature fluctuations.
One electric car convert is Tom Moloughney, owner of a Montclair, N.J., restaurant who has logged nearly 55,000 miles in the Mini E since participating in the trial. He started two blogs on BMW's electric cars.
"What's going to sell the cars won't be so much advertising but people talking to their friends and other people who have them," said Mr. Moloughney, who after initial doubts about the convenience, continues to drive the Mini E every chance he gets. "We who have been living with these cars have become the authority on them."
IMAGES OF SOME OTHER ELECTRIC CARS
BMW hopes the ActiveE, in New York Monday, shines on social-media.
Reuters
The app is just one move in a broader buzz-building campaign that BMW hopes will build demand for its first mass-produced all-electric city car, called the i3. "We need to attempt to understand [driver] behavior and create a culture first, and we need to start early and broad," said Rich Steinberg, BMW's North American electric car operations and strategy chief.
Auto makers typically only begin promoting new cars months before they go on sale, for fear a long buildup will cut into sales of existing models. But the uncertainty over how drivers will embrace the very different technology behind electric cars is turning the traditional marketing blueprint on its head.
BMW earlier this year launched a number of social media forums for electric-car enthusiasts and a four-part series of online documentaries featuring former astronaut Buzz Aldrin and other prominent people musing about the future of urban transportation. Later this year, it will begin delivering about 1,100 of an i3 pre-cursor, called the ActiveE, to U.S. and European test drivers who will be encouraged to tell neighbors, Facebook friends and anyone one else about their experiences driving it.
The German auto maker isn't alone in the approach. General Motors Co and Nissan Motor Co. began building buzz around the new Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf via Facebook, Twitter and other social media websites more than a year before those vehicles went on sale last year. In January, Ford streamed the unveiling of its Focus Electric, due to hit showroom floors in late 2011, over its Facebook page for electric car fans.
The grassroots push to establish electric cars is part of the auto industry's broader gamble that it can win over broad swaths of consumers who still worry about the cars' potential costs and whether battery power is sufficient to get them where they need to go.
Auto makers are pouring billions of dollars into developing electric cars, in part to meet ever-tougher emissions rules. Yet, according to a Consumer Electronics Association survey of U.S. drivers last year, 71% said they would fear being stranded with a dead battery and 59% said the current battery ranges of all-electric cars were too limiting for their driving needs.
"There will, of course, be a lot of first movers who buy electric cars, but at the end of the day, most consumers are going to ask: how much is this going to benefit my lifestyle?" asked Joe Kyriakoza, vice president of product and performance strategy at Jumpstart Automotive Group, an online auto marketing portal. "The marketing is going to have to focus on the real-life questions."
BMW says its taking its buzz-creating efforts a step further, by integrating what it gleans from them into the marketing and development of the i3 and other electric cars. Smartphone users who download BMW's new app, for instance, can feed their driving statistics into a main website that shows them how they and their fuel-savings compare with other drivers. BMW plans to collect the anonymous data on users' driving patterns to inform the design of its mass-market electric cars.
It has drawn insights from the online discussions of participants in its first series of electric car field trials, which began in the U.S. in mid-2009 and involved an electric version of its Mini-brand car, dubbed the Mini E. On a much-frequented Facebook page that Mini E participants set up on their own, for instance, a common refrain was how much colder weather limited battery range. "The temperature does have a huge effect," remarked one driver. "Even when I compare 70 degree [Fahrenheit] weather to 60 degree weather."
As a result, BMW said it developed its second test electric car, the ActiveE, with liquid cooling to better regulate the battery's response to temperature fluctuations.
One electric car convert is Tom Moloughney, owner of a Montclair, N.J., restaurant who has logged nearly 55,000 miles in the Mini E since participating in the trial. He started two blogs on BMW's electric cars.
"What's going to sell the cars won't be so much advertising but people talking to their friends and other people who have them," said Mr. Moloughney, who after initial doubts about the convenience, continues to drive the Mini E every chance he gets. "We who have been living with these cars have become the authority on them."
IMAGES OF SOME OTHER ELECTRIC CARS
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