Car makers can drive environmental improvements, says BMW executive

“BMW is a company that really looks for solutions,” says Ilka Hosrtmeier. “Of course we know that mobility has to change if we are going to keep the freedom and joy of that mobility, so we are making it electric, digital and circular. And we are driving it very, very fast.”

The case for car makers being environmental champions is one that will likely fall on many a deaf ear. In fact, many eco-campaigners regularly cite the world’s big car companies as the villains of the environmental piece, purveying their toxic, impactful (in every sense) wares to a world that’s already choking.

Horstmeier rejects this, and does so with some authority. Currently she’s BMW’s board member for human resources and its labour relations chief. In previous roles, though, she’s been the head of engine production in Munich – all of those iconic straight-sixes – and also the person in charge of planning for the switchover from petrol power to electric propulsion.

With such a broad spread of experience, she’s keen to emphasise that those who peddle single-word answers to the climate question, on whichever side of the debate divide they stand, are not actually offering any serious solutions. “If you look at countries everywhere, what you see is polarisation” Horstmeier tells The Irish Times.

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“There are people on one side who say that action is not being taken fast enough, and on the other side people who say everything is moving too quickly. All fringes are fuelled by populists, and they are spreading uncertainty. I hope you will agree that we should not cede the debate on sustainability to these populists, because it doesn’t lead to any new or better solution.”

Charging infrastructure is a major issue around the world, and you can see a range of different speeds in that regard if you go from the north to the south of Europe, or the east to the west

—  Ilka Hosrtmeier

Horstmeier points out that BMW got in on the ground floor of reducing the environmental impact of its products, starting with the launch of the “Efficient Dynamics” range, which helped to create some of the most fuel-efficient (in the real world) cars on sale back when buying a diesel was encouraged even by the Green Party. Then came the creation of the i3 electric hatchback and the i8 plug-in-hybrid sports car, both of which were a solid decade ahead of their time. Now we’re moving firmly into BMW’s electric era, with the new i5 joining the likes of the i4 and i7, and a gaggle of electric SUVs.

What of a commitment to full electric power, though? Unlike some other brands, BMW hasn’t gone that far yet, saying merely that the majority of the cars it sells by 2030 will be fully electric, but leaving some wiggle room for petrol power to continue. “We see that, for 100 per cent electrification, there are some prerequisites if you want to make it genuinely more sustainable than a petrol engine,” Horstmeier says.

“Charging infrastructure is a major issue around the world, and you can see a range of different speeds in that regard if you go from the north to the south of Europe, or the east to the west. If you look globally, then BMW is present in 140 markets around the world, and there are huge differences between how those countries will proceed towards electrification.”

Green energy

There is also, says Horstmeier, the issue of green energy, which is far from prevalent just yet. “Battery electric vehicles need to be driven and created by green energy, I think we all see that,” she says. “It’s not only about green energy production, it’s also about the grid, and about the materials that we use for electric vehicles. So our plan is to drive at full speed on the electric plan, as long as the prerequisites are in place. And we will keep a second path for other technologies so that we can react when there is a need, such as hydrogen power.”

At the moment, we are at about 30 per cent recycled material in our cars, and we want to push it up, up, up, for the next generation and the ‘Neue Klasse’ coming in 2025

—  Ilka Hosrtmeier

Part of the challenge that BMW has set itself is to build a car that’s not only entirely recyclable (most cars these days are around 95 per cent recyclable already) but one that’s made entirely of recycled materials. In other words, break up an old car to make a new car.

To illustrate the point, BMW brought along its i-Vision Circular concept car to the One Young World conference in Belfast, on the fringes of which this interview took place. The Circular is a curvy, futuristic MPV with an interior that seems to contain comfy armchairs, and whose exterior is made of anodised aluminium so that it doesn’t need paint. More importantly, it’s like a giant Lego kit – everything has been designed around being easy to dismantle and reuse. It’s still some way away from being a production reality, says Horstmeier, but the ideas behind it are already being incorporated:

Horstmeier is adamant that BMW can make the transition to the fully electric, circular construction age and not have to make swingeing redundancies

“We made this car to showcase the future, because we need circularity as one of the key enablers to drive sustainability in our industry. At the moment, we are at about 30 per cent recycled material in our cars, and we want to push it up, up, up, for the next generation and the ‘Neue Klasse’ coming in 2025. But to have this in series production takes time. We have to enable the entire value chain to supply those materials. We have to get the old cars back into the loop after their lifecyle. Especially considering the battery side of things, it will probably be another 10 years before we have enough material coming back in.”

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There is also the issue of employment, and that’s something close to Horstmeier’s heart. There have been many concerns raised that the move to build mechanically simpler electric cars will lead to inevitable job losses in the industry. After all, by taking out an engine and replacing it with an electric motor, you’re essentially removing several hundred components and replacing them with one. BMW says it has 149,745 employees worldwide, and they have an estimated 110,000 partners and 85,000 children between them (and an estimated 21,000 pets, if you want to dig that deep). Horstmeier is adamant that BMW can make the transition to the fully electric, circular construction age and not have to make swingeing redundancies.

“We have an integrated approach, where during the time when we are not 100 per cent electric, we can be flexible,” says Horstmeier, which seems like a small shot across the bows of some rivals who’ve ploughed billions of development euro into expensive stand-alone electric car platforms, while BMW has mixed and matched electric, hybrid, and combustion power on the same chassis.

“I was head of engine production for a long time, and we’re now taking our plants and our factories with us into the next generation. We looked at this at a very early stage and now we are restructuring our factories to make them ‘i-factories’ – lean, green, and digital. We are confident that we can win substantial market share for these future products, so that helps from the employment side, but also it is important that this is done very carefully.”

Horstmeier cites the example of BMW’s home factory, in Munich, which originally included a substantial engine-building operation. “What we said was, if we don’t take out the engine production, and introduce a new assembly line, we cannot take this historic factory into the future,” says Horstmeier. “So, we made the decision, we prepared it well, we had a strategic plan, and at the end of this year we will close engine production at the plant. And all of the 1,200 people who were employed in the engine plant, we have upskilled them and reskilled them and they have moved to new jobs within BMW. It’s what you have to do. If you want to have a successful transition, you have to think of everything together – people, product, process.”

‘I am optimistic’

Horstmeier is a keen supporter of the One Young World conference, because she has seen direct results from it. A group of young BMW employees, working across various sectors of the company, came together after last year’s conference and thought up a new system, since dubbed Re:Turn, to encourage customers to make sure that when they scrap their old BMW so the components can be brought back into BMW’s orbit for use in future new cars.

“This is why I am optimistic,” says Horstmeier. “These are the people who came all the way to Belfast to take over responsibility, to find the solutions. They are the proof that leadership is not a position or a title, it’s an attitude. And therefore I’m very proud to work for that same company, and I’m also very optimistic that we can get this message across. Because individual mobility is and remains a human need. That’s what we see. People want to be mobile, it’s about freedom, it’s about connectivity with other people. It’s something we have to sustain and people understand that, but we have to transform it and that’s what we are now driving.”