From Autoweek.com…
BMW has been messing around with electric cars for 40 years.
No one remembers the 1972 1602e, do they? It was BMW’s first EV. It had a dozen 12-volt lead-acid batteries stuffed in the trunk. The batteries weighed 771 pounds and were good for a range of 19 miles in the city.
The car was a conversion of an internal combustion engine vehicle, but it was a good conversion. BMW made two of them, both of which paced the marathon in the 1972 Munich Olympics. One of them was parked at this year’s IAA Mobility show in Munich, looking like-new.
In the 40 years since then, BMW has tried other EVs, and even made something of a sales success with the cute and quirky i3, moving over 200,000 of them out showroom doors worldwide. The iX3 was a conversion and was made for Europe and Asia only.
