Low Price of BMW's All-electric i3 Causes a Stir

Writing for the Motley Fool, Katie Spence opines that the low price ($41,350 less incentives) for the neat little BMW i3 (pictured here) is seriously bad news for competitors of various types.  The most obvious, head-on-head player is the Nissan Leaf, another smallish all-electric whose models run from  $28,800 (LEAF S) to $34,840 (LEAF SL).  But even the OEMs with indirect competitors (e.g., the top-end Tesla S and the plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt) will feel the pinch, she believes.

Is she right?  Of course.  The price of all this stuff is going to come crashing down over the coming years as demand increases (creating scale and reducing automaker costs), just like the price of laptops, flat-screen TVs, etc.  Most importantly, the equation associated with the environment will improve as we remove coal from our grid-mix, integrate more utility-scale wind, and increase the level of distributed generation – both solar and mid-sized wind.

Well done to EVWorld for covering this and the rest of the news in this space.