Editor’s letter: Are premium brands taking sustainability seriously?
Performance-oriented BMW XM weighs 2.75 tonnes – the brand's heaviest car yet
Car makers tout sustainability ambitions, but weighty, material-rich SUVs raise questions about their commitment
Car makers have a habit of converging on a trend at the same time, and sustainability is one of the industry’s top buzzwords at the moment.
The talk is about producing more efficient cars in a less energy-intensive way, of using more recycled materials in the construction of cars and then ensuring that the cars themselves can be recycled. All of which is both necessary and admirable.
It’s one year since BMW revealed its i Vision Circular concept looking at this very topic – a small, lightweight urban electric car that could be recycled. It’s a vision for 2040, and a compelling one at that. You would think there would be no time like the present to start implementing some of its ideas.
Since then, some of the models introduced by BMW include the 2.6-tonne iX, the 2.7-tonne i7 and now the even heavier XM, at 2.75 tonnes officially the heaviest car it has ever made, heavier than even the Rolls-Royce Cullinan. At this rate of progress, the 3.5-tonne tipping point that would have the car reclassified as a heavy goods vehicle isn’t that far away…
BMW isn’t alone in making ever larger, heavier cars. It’s an issue that Jim Holder discussed recently in his Inside the Industry column, citing the 2.8-tonne Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV as another eyebrow-raiser against this particular trend.
Extra weight always ends up necessitating more power, bigger brakes and bigger tyres – more of everything, really, including cost to the consumer and damage to the environment.
If there’s a pattern here, it’s that this rapidly increasing bloat does seem to be concentrated towards the German premium end of the market, which is in stark contrast to what other corners of the industry are doing.
Both Renault and Toyota have announced similar plans to use factories to refit and refurbish used cars to help extend their life, something far better for the environment than building another car from scratch. Neither have any cars weighing much more than two tonnes in their line-ups, too, let alone any closer to three tonnes.
Dacia’s strategy of making its cars as light as possible is also an admirable one, both for using less raw materials and conversely for allowing smaller and more efficient drivetrains to power its cars (and also ditching leather and chrome in the process).
There’s no evidence yet that consumers are turning their backs on resource-intensive cars, but that time will surely come as we more consciously monitor our own energy usage and carbon footprint ever more.
BMW launching a 2.75-tonne SUV with more than 700bhp isn’t really reading the room, nor does it bear any relation to what the i Vision Circular was supposed to represent.