Wednesday 20 April 2016

BMW i Designer Other Key Execs Leave for Chinese Electric-Car Startup

Leave a Comment
http://ift.tt/1VERZPp
April 20, 2016 at 11:35 am by | Photography by Anton Watts


Benoit Jacob’s name is attached to one of the most striking car designs you can buy today, the paradigm-shifting BMW i8. But recent reports suggest that Jacob and two of his BMW i Division colleagues are jumping ship for yet another out-of-nowhere Chinese-backed electric-car startup.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Jacob and coworkers Dirk Abendroth and Henrik Wenders have taken new positions with Future Mobility Corp, an electric-car startup backed by China’s Tencent Holdings. Abendroth was involved in electric powertrain development for the BMW i3 and i8; Wenders was head of product management for the BMW i division. The three recently-departed i team members follow Carsten Breitfeld, who served for 20 years at BMW before joining Future Mobility as CEO last month. Breitfeld also played a major role in the development of the i8 plug-in hybrid.

They’re not the only BMW folks to depart for newly formed auto projects—back in November, Apple hired a former BMW software engineer with experience in EV charging, ostensibly for its open-secret automotive experiment, Project Titan.



While nobody can predict what will come of Future Mobility Corp—the latest in a growing field of Chinese-backed automotive startups like Techrules and Faraday Future—we’re surprised to see these major departures from BMW’s much-hyped i division.

This story originally appeared on Road & Track.


Let's block ads! (Why?)



from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/1SZuqKY
via IFTTT

0 comments:

Post a Comment