Is Petrol *Ban* a Massive Mistake? And how has BMW engineered around it?

Even though perception is always important for humans, if we look at the facts, there's

no reason why sustainability should no longer be a top priority because the state of the

planet has never been worse than it is now.

And so it still needs to be the number one priority.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Everything Electric podcast where today I'm

catching up with Glenn Schmidt, VP of Global Sustainability at BMW. And in our conversation,

we spoke a lot about how sustainability is the key to resilience within an organisation

and should be the thing that is connecting us in an otherwise divided world. However,

many of you listening will be thinking, hmm, the same BMW that are also exploring a multi-pathway

or a multi-power train pathway. Yes, the very same. And we do explore that as well,

thinking about how on Earth is an organisation like BMW navigate the path towards sustainability

and electrification whilst also sustaining its current workforce. Hmm, very controversial indeed,

and hopefully a good source of debate in the comments I have absolutely no doubt.

So all of that to come, but first a very quick advert break.

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test drive tastic events in the Northwest and Greater London and our events down under. Next up,

Everything Electric heads to Cheltenham and then Twickenham. All events include a B2B EV day

and commercial vehicles too. Glenn, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.

I guess important question first. Could you just describe who you are and what you actually do?

Yeah, thank you very much for the opportunity. Great to have this conversation. My name is Glenn

Schmidt. I'm originally from Vancouver, Canada. So I was born and raised on the west coast,

beautiful west coast of Canada, and I moved to Germany 30 years ago. And I've been working in

the German automotive industry since then. And I've been with BMW now for 21 years. Time really

flies. And I had a lot of interesting jobs. And my last job, I was responsible for external and

government affairs. And in my new role, which I've had for about a year now, I'm responsible for

sustainability within the BMW group. But of course, sustainability is everybody's responsibility,

but I try to coordinate things. And my team kind of ties together all the strategic elements that

you need for sustainability. Well, I mean, there are a couple of things there. Firstly, Vancouver

is maybe my favorite place in the entire world. We've been lucky enough to film a lot of episodes

there over the past few years. And I just, yeah, it's incredible. The other thing I just want to

mention is that whilst 21 years, I'm sure there's many people listening who think that that's a

long time. That's probably the kind of slightly middle of the road when it comes to OEM terms.

And I suspect you have colleagues who've been there for 30, 30 plus years.

That's true. I mean, whenever I'm in meetings with BMW colleagues, and we do this round of

introduction, and often I will kick off and I'll say, you know, I've been with BMW for 21 years,

but it doesn't take very long to have somebody in the meeting who says, well, I can top that I've

been with BMW for 25 or for 30 years as well. Yeah, I like to always coin it this way, you know,

once you join BMW, you don't need to leave BMW. And it's a fantastic company. And it offers a lot

of different exciting opportunities. And, you know, if you want to have a different job,

then you don't really need to be leaving BMW because, you know, you can go into international

roles, you can go into strategic roles, you can do operative roles in terms of production.

You know, there is almost really no, let's say, professional trade that you can't find

within an OEM like this. I think this is one of the things that makes the automotive industry

so exciting. And so challenging is it's an integrator. There are just so many different

industries that kind of come together when it comes to building or designing, building and

selling a vehicle. And it's a global industry as well. So there's an international side to that.

And yeah, BMW really has all of these facets. Well, I think you put it absolutely perfectly

there that the breadth of the automotive industry is so interesting because it's one of the only

industries that is absolutely incredibly complicated, but can also span or is impacted by

geopolitics by just everything that's going on in the world. And at the same time,

is a consumer good and has to be a product that people really fall in love with. And people can

immediately understand what different products are, what they say about people, what people aspire

to have, et cetera, et cetera. So it's, it's a hugely exciting industry. And you've obviously seen

a breadth of different roles within it. Your most recent role, of course, being sustainability,

and that is what we want to spend a big chunk of the rest of the discussion talking about.

So sustainability, I mean, it's incredibly broad term, it means all manner of things.

What does it specifically mean at BMW? And I suppose in your sort of performance review,

if you would have one, what's your kind of KPI or your objective?

Well, I think one of the fundamental points of sustainability has been and still is decarbonizing,

right? So offering solutions to combat global warming, that's still very much at the core

of what we do. And BMW's conviction there is you need to be taking a holistic approach. So

when it comes to the vehicle, don't just look at the tailpipe. Don't just look at the product

itself, but also take a, take a bolder and take a broader view of things. Where is the vehicle

coming from? What are the raw materials that you need? How were they extracted and produced?

How is the vehicle being produced? And then later on, of course, how is the vehicle being,

being used? So that holistic approach, I think is a very, very important element as well.

Then of course, there's a second dimension of sustainability. And that's when you think of

ESG, it's the S, right? It's the social element as well, which I think is turning into also the

social economic element as well. BMW group employs over 150,000 people in many nations around the

world. How is the BMW group contributing to society? What are concrete activities?

So that's one element as well. And then there's of course the G, which stands for governance.

How are you governing this? What targets do you have for the organization?

And how do you coordinate a sustainability community at a global level within such a complex

corporation? So sustainability in its narrow sense is the environmental aspect, but in its

broader sense is much larger. It's how we as a global corporation, with our suppliers, with

our employees, and with all of our partners around the world, how we engage. And I think one way of

looking at it that really kind of captures things quite nicely. And at first glance, it may seem

like a bit of a contradiction is sustainability and competitiveness. These aren't contradictions,

but these are two sides of the same coin, as you would say, two sides of the same equation.

If a company is sustainable in terms of the way it operates, it's also competitive as well.

I think it's fair to say that sustainability is coming under a certain degree of pressure

in a period, and you refer to this as well, Imogen, where the world is turning geopolitical,

inward-looking, more regional, where existing business models or business models that have

been successful for many decades are coming under strain, where it would be easy to say, well,

we need to be focusing on other things, competitiveness. Let's put sustainability

in the backseat for a while. I think that's the true challenge and also the conviction to say,

wait a second, sustainability, if you're doing it correctly, easier said than done, of course,

but sustainability is, it's a competitive value. It's something that should be not just added on

to your business model, but that should be ingrained in your business model. And it's always

easy to be in podcasts like this or to be on the stage and to talk about all the shiny and glossy

things about sustainability. It's a lot of hard work. It's also sometimes resistance within the

organization, but at the end, BMW has often been able to find good solutions that are sustainable

at their core that proved to also be successful in the market. Well, there are so many things there,

but I guess I just want to pick up on that fact that sustainability can be something that's deeply

competitive and can make products infinitely better. And really, when we talk about sustainability

in those terms, what we're actually talking about is resilience. And resilience feels like a slightly

more palatable world in this climate today than sustainability, which I think gets a lot of people's

backs up. They tend to associate it with this sort of slightly polarized narrative that's playing out

when actually we're just talking about making sure that businesses can survive in a really

resilient and healthy kind of way. I suppose, okay, so there's a couple of things here. We've

got how the products are actually sourced, manufactured, used, and then recycled at the end

of their life. We've also got some aspects of sort of building that resilience, what does the

fabric of an organization look like, and then governance. But let's start with the vehicles

themselves, because we know what many people are extremely excited about the BMW iX3, the new BMW

iX3, for a multitude of reasons, not least the fact that it's got 500 miles range, it looks fantastic,

the tech is amazing, et cetera, et cetera. But there are many, many things that I'm sure as an

organization you're extremely proud of from a sustainability perspective. And I wonder if you

could share some of those. Yeah, thank you. I mean, you've, it sounds like you share our excitement

as well. And the BMW iX3, it's the first vehicle of what we refer to as the Neue Klasse. And the Neue

Klasse is a vehicle architecture, but it's more than just an architecture. It's also a whole suite

of technologies that we've introduced with the iX3 that we're also rolling out. And if you start,

I guess, with the positioning of the Neue Klasse, there were sort of three elements in the early

strategic phase, but they also played a really big role also in shaping how the vehicle and the

architecture is positioned. One of them is electric. So it's, it's about electric driving.

The second point is digital connectivity, new levels of connectivity. And the third element is

circularity, sustainability. So this new vehicle architecture, this whole new generation of

technologies is also positioned around sustainability. And it's the first time where the BMW group has

from the very first moment from the, that, that first sheet of white paper that designing and

developing a vehicle from scratch is baked in sustainability and into the concept as well.

And there are a number of, number of highlights, I think that, you know, we can touch on briefly.

One of the things, and this is something that the organization is very proud of is the BMW iX3

has a secondary raw material quota of one third. Now that means one third of the vehicle

is secondary. And that adds up to over 700 kilograms. Of course, easy math to then

calculate what the weight is of the vehicle in total, but electric vehicles are heavy.

And I think this is an important point, you know, often we say to our customers,

wait a second, just because it's one third secondary doesn't mean that it's, it's used.

You're getting a very modern, very sleek vehicle. That's an important point. And the other point

that we also like to stress is comparing the vehicle also to other drivetrain technologies

and taking that holistic approach. And that holistic approach was really how the vehicle was,

was designed. So how do you design the vehicle so that you can recycle it easily?

How do you incorporate the suppliers? 70% of the value of the vehicle is coming from suppliers.

So this is a route that you can go on your own. You need to be mobilizing and working

together with your supplier base. Then also thinking about how the vehicle itself is being

produced in the plant. How can you reduce CO2 and make that sustainable? And then all the way down

to the use phase of the vehicle as well. How is it getting used? So taking that very holistic

approach. And, you know, we always say every gram of CO2 counts, every ton of CO2 that you

don't emit is a good ton of CO2 that's not being emitted. So at first glance, you would always say,

well, an electric vehicle, because it's zero emission, a tailpipe, it's sustainable. But

you really need to take a look at the entire life cycle. And what we've done with the BMW iX3

is calculated the overall product CO2 footprint of the vehicle and compared it to a conventional

BMW iX3. And here you have to be, of course, transparent because an eternal combustion

engine vehicle emits less CO2 during the supply chain phase during the production

than a battery electric vehicle. But we've taken a lot of innovation into the

production and supply chain phase so that we've been able to reduce it by about 35% compared

to not doing any activities in sustainable innovation. And then if you look at the entire

product span and usage phase of the vehicle, and we calculate 200,000 kilometers overall,

the BMW iX3 has a CO2 if you will break even point compared to the BMW iX3 conventional

vehicle after one year. So after one year of driving the BMW iX3, you are emitting less CO2

than the conventional counterpart. And that transparency is something that a lot of customers

appreciate. Certainly the fleet customers appreciate this as well because fleet customers and over

50% of our customers in Europe are in some form fleet customers purchasing vehicles as company

cars or for larger fleets or for rental are managing CO2 of their fleets. So that level of

transparency when it comes to emissions, the data driven approach that we have. And at the end of the

day, arguing it and making that point to our customers and to stakeholders is something that

makes this this concept quite quite distinct and unique because we've never taken it to this to this

extent. Oh my goodness, I have so many questions. I'm like, okay, which thread shall we pull on?

Well, I guess my first question perhaps is that with a third of the materials being recycled,

presumably that also can change what your supply chain looks like from a regulatory perspective.

So for example, if those materials have been recycled within Germany, then that's a domestic

sourcing of that material. So how much has anticipation of future regulations and existing

regulations shaped the necessity to also do that above and beyond doing the right thing from a

sustainability perspective? I think that that question, because a vehicle is very complex,

very complicated and consists of a lot of different materials and material groups,

it's difficult to answer that on an overall vehicle level. I think we need to be making that

distinction. So let's take aluminum, for example, the BMW ix3, it uses aluminum ribbons, they're made

of 70% secondary material, secondary aluminum, there you can really reduce the CO2 immensely,

and the market for secondary aluminum is quite established. Then there are other product groups,

like for example, the plastics. It's an interesting play on words, it's called the

frunk. So it's the front trunk, the frunk of the BMW ix3, which is used as a storage compartment for

the charging cable. There we're able to reach 30% secondary material quota using recycled ocean

plastic. This is just to make it clear to all the listeners, this is not plastic that we're

retrieving from the ocean, but this is plastic that we're purchasing from fissures around the world

to prevent it from going into the ocean. There we're able to reach 30% for the frunk, which is

the highest that you can possibly do, because with plastic you have a lot of degradation,

and you can't maintain the level of quality that you need for the automotive grade components

that you're using. And when it comes to the battery, there were around 50%

secondary raw material quota. When it comes to the lithium, the cobalt, as well as the nickel as

well, and we're trying to close the loops in Europe, but we're at the start of battery electric

vehicles. So there still is mining to extract these minerals, but the intent, the strategic

intent is to close the loops for a number of reasons, in terms of resilience,

protecting the environment, reducing CO2. So there's a complicated answer to a very

simple question that you asked Imogen, and then the other question that you have,

it's sort of chicken egg, is it the strategy or is it fulfilling regulations? In an ideal world,

you would say business is coming up with the business case, and it's inherently sustainable,

and then you would regulate where you need to be regulating. In an imperfect world, and we've had

this, unfortunately, in Europe for a long time, is you're trying to regulate the future that you

want to do it, and you're relying more on bands than you are on empowering and creating the supply

chains, and then you're creating unnecessary roadblocks. So the diplomatic answer to your

question, Imogen, is it's a mix of both, right? It is, of course, and if I look at circularity,

it's thinking of circularity in broader terms, not just to reduce CO2, but also to have resilient,

robust supply chains, and that space is regulated and will continue to be regulated in the future,

so that of course you're prepared for that regulation when it comes.

So I've got two questions, which I suppose are slightly more existential questions, and they

won't be unique to to BMW. I think every single car company is having the exact same debate,

but if we look at something like the new BMW iX3, it's an incredible machine, as we've said. The

stats are extraordinary, 800-volt architecture, 500 miles range, etc., etc., and I know that our

audience will be thinking two things. On the one hand, they'll be thinking, fantastic, 800-volt

architecture means that you've got thinner cables, less cooling requirement, that's a lighter vehicle,

it's a more efficient vehicle. At the same time, 500 miles range is lovely, but it's a big battery,

and that will have a sort of bigger environment footprint. Ultimately, you need to be able to

sell these vehicles and to have those performance stats to help sell them as well. And then equally,

on the software side, these software-defined vehicles, as we know, enable sort of those ongoing

evolution updates can happen over the air in theory that vehicle can continue to improve

for a long time over its lifetime. But equally, car brands have to drive more sales on an ongoing

basis and have to kind of plan redundancy into it in order to kind of get people to move on to

the next vehicle. So the sort of, I guess, the existential question is how on earth do you use

organizations to balance the need to be sustainable, extend the life of these products,

make them more efficient, but also serve customers and drive sales and continue to drive and build

sales as well. Well, the best way to guarantee current sales is to build in a superior product,

right, at the end of the day. And I was sort of getting the feeling listening to you that

maybe between the lines you were saying, well, does a car company like BMW at a global level

sort of maybe build in some inherent faults into the vehicle so that they have a limited life span

so that you're ensuring that sales will be coming down the road. And I think that's not quite the

case, right? I would soften that slightly just to say that like, you know, you've got to as an

organization, I would never suggest that people would be like, oh, we'll put this little fault in,

but that, you know, you're thinking about a customer and thinking about the lifetime of

that customer thinking like, okay, they will probably own this vehicle for X amount of time.

What happens to keep them in the brand? And like the, you know, the pure sustainability person would

be like, no, we want them to own that one vehicle for a thousand years and never buy another vehicle

again. But like that's not the reality of running a business. So that's the sort of slightly softer

way to sort of phrase that question, maybe. Right, right. Yeah. And I think it's,

you know, at the end, it's about coming, coming up with a, with a proposition for the customer that

really checks all of the, all of the boxes, right? And design and performance, these are still the

number one purchase reasons for a vehicle. But we believe in, you know, in a world where you need

more differentiation, that sustainability and sustainability virtues, virtues can also play

an important role. And I think you also have to realize that you have not one owner of a vehicle

in most cases. You know, there are many customers that fall in love with their BMWs and say,

well, I will keep my BMW for decades and wait for it to become a classic vehicle.

And in some cases that's also a good investment because as classic vehicles later on the value

of the vehicle even increases. But typically you will have a customer that will own the vehicle for

a couple of years or lease the vehicle and then will be passed on as a used vehicle to another

vehicle. And then oftentimes these vehicles then move also to other markets as well where they are

used. So you need to be thinking about that entire time and sustainability is also about

durability, right? So if you have a durable vehicle that fulfills very, very high quality

standards, then you are ensuring happy customers and these customers that are pleased with the

vehicle quality then will come back and be repeat owners as well. And what we've done with our

vehicles and especially with the BMW iX3 as the first vehicle in the Neue Klasse is thinking

also from cradle to grave because thinking for the longest time in industry has been very linear,

right? You're extracting material, you're using it and then you're tossing it away. But how do you

actually close the loop so that you design a vehicle so that you can take it apart, that you

have a different view on materials, that it's not at the end of life when the vehicle's life

finally ends after many decades but it's not just scrap, right? But it's a source of raw materials

as well. And if we use the example of a battery electric vehicle, I'm exaggerating a little bit

but just to make it a visualization, you could almost think of these vehicles as mines on wheels,

right? You have the lithium, you have the cobalt, the nickel, the metal, the aluminum,

the plastics to a lesser degree that can all be used again and being put into a closed loop

for the next generation of vehicles. And there's no reason why you shouldn't do that

going forward. And that just takes so many different boxes as well. It's reducing CO2,

it's reducing our independence on other geopolitical regions. Unfortunately, we're in a world where

you have more regionalization moving forward and if you do it correctly, it's also a good business

model as well and makes a lot of economic sense. Yeah, and I guess ultimately enables that sort of

own or broader ownership of the supply chain as well, like if that model is taken further into

the future. So a few weeks ago, I was, I was, okay, I've got one more question before I come to

that question. But a few weeks ago, I listened to your colleague at the Financial Times Street

with the car event and he was talking about how actually AI enables us to, what enables BMW to

talk to all sorts of different customers and actually to really talk in a way that that

customer wants to be spoken to. So I'm curious to know for which sort of people is sustainability

a key concern or a key criteria when exploring their next vehicle purchase?

So there are the two ways of looking at this, you know, there's one way of looking at it is to

say, you know, the customers will tend to look at things that just pertain to them, right? The

design, the price for value, the performance in the vehicle. And some customers, the sustainability

will be really important to them. But that's kind of a smaller group that's not as relevant. And I

think that needs to have an incredible functionality. You need to get the customer enthusiastic

and proud to own. And then on top of that, by the way, this vehicle is very sustainable.

So let's use the example of the aluminum rim. It's, it's perfect. It has a beautiful design,

but it's 70% secondary. Look at the BMW iX3 recently received a number of awards for 2026.

It's the world car of the year. It is the world electric car of the year. It has incredible driving

characteristics with a super brain that we refer to as the heart of joy, because it, it proves that

this reinterpretation of driving is exhilarating and fun and you're doing it in electric form.

And the vehicle is efficient. And if you're driving an electric vehicle, total cost of ownership,

you can also be saving money compared to conventional alternatives. And all these things,

you know, that's sustainability at second glance, all of these things get customers excited.

And I think that's, that's ultimately what's often missed in these debates. I mean, we always talk

about electric mobility from the regulatory perspective and promoting it with a ban or EV quotas

or a lot of intellect indirect regulation as well, kind of forcing the consumer to go in that

direction. But I think the true and ultimately you can't force consumers, right? They need to be

doing this out of conviction. Otherwise, they will continue driving their vehicles.

And at the end, it's the proposition. It's the driving. It's what is the impact for your wallet?

What is the emotion that you have? And I think this is a little bit underrated

with electric vehicles. And, you know, once you go electric, you're not very likely to go back

because it sets an exhilarating exhilarating feeling. So that's the emotional level of things.

And I think, and I touched on this very briefly, you, I mean, fleet customers,

these are, you shouldn't be underrated as well, business customers, because they have

CO2 targets for their fleets, sustainability policies. So you're a large corporation,

you will have a sustainability strategy. How can you support your sustainability strategy

with the fleet that you're driving as well? And having a sustainable fleet is something

that's also important as well. So this is one next to the private consumer, also the

the fleet customer, I think is an important lever also to kind of leverage electric mobility and

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that same innovation to every Ion tire on the road. So again, at the future of the car event,

a theme that really emerged was the desire for certain European car brands to pursue a multi-energy

strategy, something which I know that BMW is keen to do. And really, when you kind of distill that

down, it's saying, well, customers are on different trajectories, which you have to accommodate,

car brands have to function as global organizations and regionally, there's different things going on.

And also, these organizations are huge employers and hugely responsible for driving livelihoods

within a country. And when we talk about ESG and we talk about sustainability, yes,

we're talking about emissions, but you can't just ignore this major, major workforce as well,

which is a bit of a conflict that, on the one hand, pursuing decarbonization,

pursuing electric vehicles, but also having to transition a workforce in the right kind of way.

And you sort of alluded to earlier that some of the regulations, sort of policies

that may be in place might not be the most favorable thing for BMW and others like you.

And I wonder if we were to put you in charge of both BMW, and let's say Europe, a big role,

what do you think seems like the really logical response that arrives at a conclusion that does

the maximum amount of good in the world? Well, there's a bit of a jump there between the BMW

responsibility and then the responsibility for Europe. Exactly. And it's a good question.

And I'll give it a shot. I think we should not be coming from, let's say,

mandating the future the way we want to have it. What we should be mandating are the targets.

And the overarching target, of course, is to reduce CO2, to be compliant with the Paris climate

agreement, and to make sure that we have this trajectory to 2050 to be net zero. And the BMW

group has embraced this target of becoming net zero by 2050. And this is also the target

of the European Union. So you can't change that, right? That's the pathway that you're on.

The question is, however, how do you get there? And if you're taking the approach when it comes

to drivetrain technologies and CO2 flip regulation of banning one specific technology and forcing

the other technology, then you're creating a constraint. Often I hear the argument, well,

you need to have planning certainty, right? And that would give planning certainty to the industry

to know that in 2035, you will have no new internal combustion engines being registered.

But how can or how could I, if I was responsible for the European Union, say that on the 31st of

December 2034, that's the day where you sell your final internal combustion engine vehicle

and segue into another technology. So banning and just mandating targets is not the right approach.

The right approach, however, is to say, well, we have a collective target and that is to reduce

CO2, every gram and ton of CO2, not emitted counts, take a holistic approach and make sure

that you have the right framework conditions in place. And these framework conditions need to

take a lot of things into consideration because the world is complex. They need to,

the framework conditions need to take into consideration how much charging infrastructure

is available. The framework conditions need to take into consideration what is the European

economy and German economy and industry particularly good at. And next to battery electric vehicles

where you have incredible product substance coming also from our competitors, very good at the

internal combustion engine. Then you need to be thinking as well, well, you have a fleet of over

250 million vehicles on European streets that are all predominantly being driven

with internal combustion engines and fossil fuel. Why not decarbonize

fuels as well? Because that is a lot of potential. If it's all about preventing global warming,

or slowing global warming, we can't stop it anymore, but slowing it, then you would need to

take a look at the existing park and create a framework that also encourages the carbonization

of fuels. And taking a broader and more diverse approach is often better than just trying to

mandate something in the future. And ultimately, it's about competitiveness. So if Europe and

European industry isn't competitive at a global level, even though the industry may be inherently

more sustainable, you will have other regions of the world that are more competitive that will

be pushing through their solution. So unfortunately, we need to be also seeing this at a geopolitical

level as well. From a European perspective, what do we need to do to ensure that the industrial

base remains strong and remains competitive without giving up sustainability? If you do it

correctly, you'll be able to do both of those things at the same time. And I'm so curious,

because it's very easy to look backwards and to think of like, let's draw all these threads

together and sort of unpick it. But do you think if there hadn't been a ban that actually

there would have been a natural move towards electrification anyway purely from an efficiency

perspective? And I guess like the sort of simple version of that question is, has making sort of

one very, very clear parameter that's been deemed largely sort of quite controversial across, you

think it's a problem in terms of how it's perceived, if that makes sense?

It does make sense. Yeah, I think, well, the ban certainly doesn't make sense, but your question

makes sense to me. Yeah, I think that the ban it certainly hasn't hasn't helped, right? I mean,

we have now a debate currently for revision of the sewer two fleet regulation. And I think it's

fair to say that there will be at the end of this debate, although there are different perspectives

and positions, it's fair to say that the ban may get lifted at the end of the day, so it will not

be such a hard ban. But currently we have a ban, right? And that ban hasn't led to an acceleration

in terms of the uptake. If I think about the 27 European member states, five of them will have

in their new car market share over 30% battery electric vehicles, all electric vehicles,

and the remaining, what does that mean? That means the remaining 22 member states have shares that

are well below that. So you have a really big difference within Europe. If I look at,

you know, and often in these debates, there's an elephant in the room, you haven't mentioned it yet,

but I will, and that's China. You see that China has been able to currently, and their new car sales

go well over 50% in terms of battery electric vehicle sales, but there's no ban in place.

So obviously using different methods, doing different means of doing that, but the ban has

done one thing, hasn't necessarily promoted the uptake of electric vehicles. What it has done,

it has ended the future of the internal combustion engine. The moment there's a end date for any

technology, then you will see that a lot of the investment will go out of the technology,

a lot of, with the internal combustion engine, a lot of specialized mid-size SME companies

that are leaders in their segment will have difficulty financially because the market's

disappearing or they're not able to get credits from their banks as well. And although at the

first line, bottom line, it may be, let's say, not intuitive, but it is possible to push something

that's new and even better, like battery electric vehicles, without giving up the old. You give up

the old when you have the economic and industrial powers of the new, and there are economic regions

around the world that understand this principle, that you promote something new, but then you keep

the old as long as you need it. And unfortunately, the world around us is not black and white.

There's a lot of complexity inside of it. So even if I were to go one step forward, BMW has been very

technology open in all of this debate, which does not mean, and I think this may have been mistaken

a number of years ago during the first debate on this issue, technology openness doesn't mean

you're clinging on to the internal combustion engine and not progressing. It means you're using

the advantages that you have in your drivetrain to serve global markets, but it's possible to be

technology open in terms of strategy that promote one technology, and that is the battery electric

vehicle technology, and to do a thorough job of it, a strategic job of it, and to try and get that

position of a strong market positioning as well. So it's possible to do both. In fact,

you have to do both in order to survive in these really turbulent geopolitical times.

And it's such a conflict because I know that I'm anticipating, because we have an audience who are

very fierce advocates of electric vehicles, and of course, because once you've driven electric,

we've said it earlier, like it just sort of makes sense. And there's been this real excitement

anticipation of more and more options being available. And this year, you know, the benchmark

has been set Volvo EX60 and BMW iX3, all of our reviews and not just ours, but other YouTubers

as well. They're always just comparing them to those two vehicles. But at the end of the day,

the European car market in particular hasn't been afforded this blank sheet approach that

Chinese OEMs have, in which it strategically makes sense to pursue one powertrain. Because

why if you were starting from scratch, would you pursue an aging technology and make your

like business extremely complicated? Existing OEMs don't have that that kind of luxury of just

saying, Yeah, do you know what? Let's let's spin that bit. We don't need it. So it's hugely

complicated. And it's such a nuanced debate, which becomes very polarized in I think this current

current climate. So I guess a question I'd love to know, because what I love about having worked

in OEMs is that, you know, these are complicated products, there are inevitably debates that

happen all the time, where different departments, different personalities are vying for a particular

thing. And it creates a lot of fun debate. So I wonder what are the biggest debates that occupy

your weeks internally? You did work for an OEM and if I'm informed correctly, there's a little

which was, is there BMW heritage there? I don't know. I was just doing a bit of research with your

LinkedIn site as well. And I and I saw a like a little splash of BMW in there. But maybe

I wasn't hallucinating, but I thought it was something. I was thinking, was there, have I

misremembered the ownership? But no, I know exactly what you're what you're talking about.

I did a project whilst I was at university at the mini plant here in Oxford. And it was really cool

because it was the first time I learned terms like first in first out or last in first out about

how things are loaded onto a production line. And that specific project I'm really going into the

back of my memory here was around making the glazing process a bit more efficient preventing

damage to the glass that arrived at the factory. And it was the first time I'd really been in a

factory, I think. And it was just, it's like Willy Wonka, but for grown-ups, it's incredible.

So yes, you're right. That was my beer. I just thought I just I just noted that you're conducting

the interview, not me, but I was just curious. But in terms of answering your question, what

are the biggest debates that kind of keep me awake at night? I think one of the big debates

right now in the automotive industry is, what's the path forward for Europe in a world that's

still very global, but where you have a lot of geopolitical competition. And there are two

schools of thinking. One school of thinking is, well, Europe sort of needs to become a fortress,

you know, you need to have tariffs, local content, stiffer local content requirements.

And the best way to kind of keep competition out is to build a wall, right? And the other

thinking is, and surprise, surprise, this is BMW's way of thinking is, well, the European

automotive industry is global. And that means we need to be successful in China, continue to be

successful in China. It's the largest market. It's the it's a there's a hyper competition in the

market. A lot of new technology is being driven or being paced in China as well. So if you're global

and want to be globally successful, then you need to continue to be successful in China

in that way. And you need to do competition. You're cooperating, but you're also competitors,

right? And so that also applies to sustainability as well, right? Is sustainability a connector?

Or is sustainability a device factor? And that's one of the big debates. And my position is,

of course, in a world that's turning a lot more divisive, it's still important to think of sustainability,

climate protection, and this planet is something that connects us. Even though China or Europe

currently, the US will have different approaches, it's still a connector. So that's, I think,

one of the big issues. The other the other thing that debate that keeps me up at night as well is,

um, how do you keep sustainability relevant in a world where you talk a lot more about

competitiveness, resilience, functioning business models in tech supply chains, energy crisis as

well? And there the answer is, well, sustainability answers all of those questions, right? A circular

business model is something that helps you to secure raw materials that you need. It also

de-risks your supply chain if you're sourcing material only once, right? In Europe, we don't

have a thriving mining industry, but we also want to be driving electric vehicles in the future. So

you will need to do mining in the future and extract minerals for the increasingly large

park of electric vehicles. But let's only do it once. Let's keep it in a circular model as well.

And how can we not give up on things that are important to us, like, for example,

the Paris Climate Agreement and continuing to decarbonize? So this whole debate,

where sustainability is being put a little bit under pressure externally, this is something that

is also a big debate as well. And, you know, I said this early on in our conversation,

it's really, the art is to combine and the art is to realize that sustainability is broad

and connects all of these elements. And even though perception is always important for humans,

if we look at the facts, there's no reason why sustainability should no longer be a top priority

because the state of the planet has never been worse than it is now, right? Or continuing to

emit CO2. We have a major problem when it comes to biodiversity. The level of global warming that

we cannot stop leads to disastrous effects around the world. And so it still needs to be

the number one priority. And I suppose as such, there has to be that better understanding that

it is the magic thread that weaves through everything to build that competitive edge,

to build that resilience, to do risk of business, to keep things global as well. Because that by

its nature makes supply chains more diverse and makes them, again, more resilient as a product of

that. So many pearls of wisdom in there. And I suppose if I could afford you one wish,

one thing that would just make some of those daily worries a little bit lighter, what would you ask

them? If I had that magic wand, that one big wish, I think my big wish would be that

sustainability is still a connector. That's something that connects worlds. We will have

different understandings of how to run economies. We will have different political systems. We will

have more and more hyper competition. We will have a scarcity of resources. These things are all

coming. But my hope would be that sustainability doesn't end up flipping and being an instrument

for further protectionism. And unfortunately, we are seeing that trend, that you're using

sustainability regulation to keep people out, to keep the world more fragmented. But that

sustainability can still be a connector. And unfortunately, from an economic or industrial

perspective, you could sometimes say, well, the first mover, you would have a disadvantage

when it comes to sustainability. There's maybe an inherent first mover disadvantage when

an economy says, well, we want to be net zero first. We see India as 2070, China 2060, Europe

2050, Germany 2045. Then you could say, well, there's an inherent disadvantage in doing this first.

But if everybody thinks like that collectively, then it's the end, right?

And so that would be my big wish, that sustainability nature and the planet is

still a connector, despite the differences and the variety that we have around the world.

And my last question, what's the one thing that you're most proud of

for BMW from a sustainability perspective? The thing that you like makes you feel really,

really good inside?

There isn't really one big thing, but it's a whole series of things. I think it's,

I think what, what makes me proud, but what makes the entire organization proud is that

sustainability has always played an important role and has ultimately given a lot of strategic

advantage. In 1973, BMW was the first company to have an environmental officer. Then,

2007, we came up with efficient dynamics. How can vehicles become more efficient,

but still be dynamic and fun to drive? It seems like a contradiction,

but our engineers prove that it isn't. For Project I in 2008, that initial think tank

within the company that said, let's develop an electric vehicle from scratch and think about

things holistically, and that led to the BMW i3, not the one that's coming in the market now,

as we speak, but the i3 that came in 2013, that you still see on the streets, first bold moves

and shows with all electric series vehicles. Now, all the way coming up to the Neue Klasse,

where sustainability and circularity is part of how we position the vehicle and the

transformation of the entire company. I think this is the one thing that doesn't answer your

question. I'm not trying to dodge it, but I think it's just the fact that beautiful BMW

and all of our associates around the world think sustainable. It's not always easy. There are a lot

of debates, but at the end of the day, it's always played an important role in our strategy

and this helped us shape the company that we are today.

Well, I think the fact that you can't point to one thing and it's a collective of things,

points to a bigger achievement of just that sustainability exists as part of the

fabric of the culture and the DNA of the brand. I can't believe that 1973 was the date,

but incredible that 1973, there was that environment.

That's one of the reasons why I always hesitate to say I'm responsible for sustainability,

because that's not really true. Everybody's responsible for sustainability.

Honestly, this has been an incredibly enjoyable conversation. Thank you so much for your candor

and for exploring some of those rabbit holes with me. I so appreciate the discussion.

Thank you so much.

Thank you as well. I've enjoyed the conversation.

Is Petrol *Ban* a Massive Mistake? And how has BMW engineered around it?

About this episode

circularity, sustainability

regulatory perspective

geopolitical regions

geopolitical times

Car Bmw Ix3

Term Neue Klasse

Term circularity, sustainability

Term secondary raw material quota

Concept life cycle

Term tailpipe

Term product CO2 footprint

Term supply chain phase

Concept break even point

Concept fleet customers

Concept regulatory perspective

Term secondary material

Term frunk

Concept close the loops

Term 800-volt architecture

Term 500 miles range

Term cradle to grave

Term battery electric vehicle

Term mines on wheels

Concept geopolitical regions

Term CO2 targets

Brand Honkuk

Term multi-energy strategy

Term ESG

Concept technology open

Concept internal combustion engine

Concept geopolitical times

Car Volvo EX60

Term sustainability regulation

Concept protectionism

Concept first mover disadvantage

Term net zero

Term efficient dynamics

Car BMW i3

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Is Petrol Ban a Massive Mistake? And how has BMW engineered around it?