With Electric Cars Slow to Gain Ground, BMW Focuses on Efficiency

The following is an excerpt from an article in:


The New York Times
Wednesday, September 19, 2012

With Electric Cars Slow to Gain Ground, BMW Focuses on Efficiency

By JACK EWING

MAISACH, Germany — Despite all the hoopla at car shows over the last few years, it has become clear that electric cars will not appear on roads fast enough to save the planet. As a result, when the Paris auto show opens next week, the emphasis will be on improved varieties of internal combustion.

A case in point is BMW, one of the most visible champions of battery power, which in recent days has been hedging its bets and trying new ways to get more out of conventional gasoline and diesel motors.

Such technology is not as futuristic or glamorous as BMW’s i-Series cars, the first of which, a battery-powered city compact, will go on sale next year. But in the short term, executives of the carmaker contend, the most realistic way to cut fuel consumption is through innovations like a three-cylinder motor that it showed to reporters at briefings last week and on Tuesday.

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