Over in the UK, Car reports that BMW is going to expand its innovative i brand in 2020. According to Car’s Georg Kacher, the i3 and i8 are to be joined in 2020 by the i6. The new car will be a crossover with a 300-mile range, although BMW hasn’t decided whether to make the i6 a battery electric vehicle, fuel cell EV, or hybrid.
The plan is to use lithium polymer batteries, with the idea that the technology will have matured sufficiently to make 500kWh batteries cheap enough. As with the i3 and i8, the focus will be on making the car as light as possible. However, BMW wants to sell many more i6s—Kacher says 60,000 a year—so we ought not to expect quite as much carbon fiber.
Styling is said to be something like Citroën’s DS5, which makes the i6 name slightly odd. BMW’s naming convention seems to have broken down recently, but even numbers are usually reserved for coupes (except when they’re not, like the 2 Series hatchback, X6, or 6 Series Gran Coupe).