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I appreciate your commentary. I found it to be well thought out and your opinions well communicated. Like you, I am somewhat skeptical of Fröhlich's attitude and approach.
I also wanted to thank you for alerting me to the Jalopnik article. It, as well as some other Jalopnik pieces that were linked from it, were fantastic resources that provide extremely valuable insight to the challenges BMW is facing and their strategies to overcome them.
Lately I find myself looking forward to small (think E30 size) ultra high performance RWD (or AWD with RWD bias) EVs. I don't really care about luxury, I just want the thing to *move*. So, for all the great potential BMW's CLAR-WE (the electrified CLAR platform Fröhlich describes) and Tesla's premium dedicated EV platforms hold, I'm less interested in what either of them are doing than I am in what is going on at VW. I am hoping that by sometime late next decade, I will be able to buy a truly compact performance BEV - in whatever form factor, hatchback would be cool, but anything built to go around corners quickly will do - with about 500hp and 300 miles of range. I'd even trade some range for more power (even though the two don't have a technical dependency, there is perhaps compromises to be made on the basis of cost).
VW is more than happy to share their MEB platform, and hometown hero Ford is rumored to be interested. So, even if VW has no plans to build a hot rod EV, maybe a future Ford product or product from some other non-premium automaker will fit the bill. I see a wide open market here for - once battery costs come down - some really freakin' cheap, really freakin' quick vehicles.
And who knows, maybe once BMW does commit to using a dedicated EV platform, we'll see some small performance BEV's from them next decade as well. Rumors persist of a partnership with Mercedes to come up with something they can both use in the small EV segments. It's going to be fun to watch the number of entries grow quickly across the industry and, hopefully, see fierce competition yielding some amazing machines for us enthusiasts.
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