BMW 2008 Annual Report Download - page 185

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But what is the point of individual mobility if you are moving
no faster than a well-trained jogger? Or, to put it another
way: What kind of future urban mobility would enable people
to reach their destination reliably and without hassle once
again? Which vehicles would be needed, with which cli-
mate-neutral drive technologies – and how could we find
new ways of integrating them with other means of
trans-
port? How many wheels should the ideal urban mobility
concept have? And which factors that nobody has even
thought of should planning take into account?
All these questions have been the subject of a radically
open discussion taking place in a plain factory building at
the heart of the BMW plant in Munich that began in spring
. From the outside one would never guess that a
revolution is being planned right here. A grey-painted stair-
way leads through a restricted access area to a buzzing
open-plan office. The walls are covered with city maps,
charts, flow diagrams and hand-drawn sketches. Tele-
phones ring non-stop; engineers dash from one desk to
another. Standing right next to the doorway is a prototype
of a BMW electric bicycle with a sign reading “E-Parking
Only” hanging over it.
All this brings to mind the excitement of the days when
start-ups were springing up all over the place; and, at first
glance, the project does indeed appear to have a lot in
common with a start-up. Set up as a largely autonomous
company within the company, project i is probably the
most far-reaching future project launched as part of the
Group’s corporate strategy Number ONE. Its mission is
nothing less than to completely rethink mobility for people
who live in the world’s metropolitan areas – and that in-
cludes everything from vehicle concepts to production
structures through to branding and service strategies. The
“i” in the project name ambitiously stands for intelligent,
innovative and international. “We have tremendous free-
dom,” says Inga Jürgens , a graduate in management
information systems who joined project i from the BMW
Group’s strategy department. “Not just for the sake of
it,” she adds, “but because we strongly believe that the
premium mobility of the future cannot be developed from
the concepts of the past.”
December 2007
Launch of
project i
March 2008
Megacity analysis
completed