Mini plans to switch to electricity by 2030
The Mini brand will stop selling fuel cars by 2030, according to a report in the German newspaper Der Spiegel.
The brand also plans to introduce its latest fuel-powered model in 2025, and half of its sales are electric by 2027.
The official roadmap is presented next week, and the plan makes Mini the first brand in the BMW Group to be fully electric.
Car model lines typically last about seven years before being retired or retired, giving the latest 2025 fuel-efficient Mini model a short timeline ahead of its apparent retirement in 2030.
The Mini is a relatively concentrated brand, with Cooper, Clubman and Countryman, and it facilitates the transition to all-electric because it sells a relatively small number of models.
Mini is currently building a single electric vehicle, the Mini Cooper SE, and the company plans to produce an electric crossover at some point soon, and has demonstrated the concept of the autonomous electric van.
The decision to switch to all-electric is important given that Germany, the home of BMW, is looking to plan to end fuel car sales starting in 2030.
The UK, home of the Mini brand, has also expedited the newly proposed ban on fuel vehicles from 2035 to 2030.
Much of the rest of Europe is united in roughly the same year, as is the case with some American states.
China, the largest market for BMW cars (the United States and Germany in the second and third places), plans to ban non-hybrid vehicles starting in 2035, although this plan still allows half of the new cars in the country to run on fuel, such as traditional hybrid cars.
Despite these timelines, the BMW Group itself has not committed to converting to full electricity by 2030.
This raises questions about where BMW plans to sell fuel cars after 2030.
BMW was an early pioneer in electric vehicles, producing the original Mini E (primarily as a test vehicle) starting in 2009.
This was followed by ActiveE, a BMW 1 series modified into an electric motor, and then the BMW i3, BMW's first electric car built from the ground up.
The company appeared to be at the fore when the BMW i3 debuted in 2013, but has since been discontinued for many years.
BMW promised in 2018 that it would have 12 all-electric models by 2025.
And in the three years since then, the only electric vehicles BMW launched have been the new electric Mini Cooper SE and the newly released BMW iX3.
Other manufacturers issued similar announcements recently, with Daimler halting research and development operations for internal combustion engines in 2019.
Jaguar becomes fully electric in 2025, while Volvo recently announced plans to produce cars without a combustion engine starting in 2030, and GM aspires to be fully electric by 2035.