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Originally Posted by mkoesel
Sure, it has technical merit in spades - no argument there.
But in the matter of total corporate value, it fails on the basis of long term flexibility, scalability, and financial sustainability. The fact of the matter is that this could have been BMW's MEB, and then they could be ahead of the game with a range of EV's that compete with the ones that people today want - everything from your Bolt to a Model 3. And, with a little better foresight in the development of the vehicle architecture, they'd have been able to add larger batteries, multiple motors, more powerful motors, etc. Instead, they put the money into the wrong place - the materials. The CFRP certainly made the thing lighter, but then even if you nix that in favor of aluminum or other light-weighting measures, its still going to have a very reasonable weight compared to other products.
Not only that, but it soaked up funds and getting burned tends to leave decision makers gun-shy. It was a breakthrough vehicle program at the time, but it was nevertheless a nasty speed bump, and the ramifications are still taking their tole. Yes, this is all "hindsight 20/20" stuff, but it is nevertheless part of the reason why things are the way they are today with the company somewhat scrambling to get a foothold in order to compete in coming decade.
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I don’t know the costs myself, but Sandy Munro says here that in his i3 teardown they found the i3 with its CFRP goodness to be a money maker actually. I forget the minutes when they discuss this, but the whole thing is worth a listen tbh, interesting stuff