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      01-25-2014, 08:18 AM   #1
cc3
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Is production too slow ?

Cars seem to only be trickling out of factory. Friend of mine cancelled order as delivery date pushed back again. BMW gone quiet in quoting sales numbers ?? Also advertising gone off tv in UK.

So is BMW finding the complexity of this new car a challenge ?

Would be interesting to know how many cars have left the factory?
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      01-25-2014, 05:43 PM   #2
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cc3 View Post
Cars seem to only be trickling out of factory. Friend of mine cancelled order as delivery date pushed back again. BMW gone quiet in quoting sales numbers ?? Also advertising gone off tv in UK.

So is BMW finding the complexity of this new car a challenge ?

Would be interesting to know how many cars have left the factory?
Could be the complexity of the car, but - for us cynics - another answer could be that it is simply BMW following their long established practice of limiting the initial flow of a new models in order to build up demand and inflate prices for as long as possible

The same thing is going on right now with the new X5. It's trickling out of the US factory at a snail's pace, so dealers have no inventory and are able to insist on full MSRP prices (with some even getting OVER MSRP.)
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      01-25-2014, 09:25 PM   #3
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Car manufacturers do not want to deliver defective vehicles...my guess is that with the push to meet the demand, one or more of the suppliers couldn't keep up while maintaining the needed quality. BMW uses a JIT production scheme, so any delay can stop nearly the whole production line. The typically may only have a day or so of material on hand...therefore, any delay will slow or stop production, depending. There's also very little room to store vehicles that may be able to be built and sit waiting for a final bit to be installed.

If you have an opportunity to tour one of their factories and see the constant stream of trucks arriving, you'd get a real appreciation of the process. BMW is not alone in this, but it was first promoted by Toyota, and now many big factories are using the technique.

Huge inventories of parts might let things continue, but they take up valuable space, tie up inventory dollars, and make it harder to do inline enhancements or improvements since that may affect more than one part, and if you have thousands of them sitting around, the incentive to do that is lower, and may delay things, and then you have to deal with potential incompatibilities.
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      03-13-2014, 06:28 PM   #4
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Virtually every production procedure for the i3 is different than anything that BMW does for all of their other cars. In addition they are working with materials they never have before in such volume.

BMW knew the production ramp up for the i3 would be slow. I had conversations with BMW people about this over a year ago. The first 6 months to a year they will be monitoring every vehicle extra carefully and making sure the quality is very high. They are still refining the production to get everything perfected and are currently only churning out about 70 cars per day. That will eventually increase, but not until they are confident they have everything ready for it.
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      03-13-2014, 09:24 PM   #5
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Demand is low, hence production is low??
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      03-14-2014, 07:33 PM   #6
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There are reports that those in the UK that can't find one on the lot and want to order one, their delivery dates are like 5-months off. They have something like 10K orders, and at 70/day, that's nearly 5-months, and they have not been in production that long. It doesn't sound like it's a demand thing...much more likely ironing out the production process to ensure high quality. Nothing is worse than putting out a fault laden product at product introduction, so prudent path is to take it slowly. On a line that is well established, while every vehicle gets an inspection, and one in a bunch gets a more thorough one, when new, each gets more checks until the process is totally vetted.
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      03-18-2014, 07:22 AM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jadnashuanh
There are reports that those in the UK that can't find one on the lot and want to order one, their delivery dates are like 5-months off. They have something like 10K orders, and at 70/day, that's nearly 5-months, and they have not been in production that long. It doesn't sound like it's a demand thing...much more likely ironing out the production process to ensure high quality. Nothing is worse than putting out a fault laden product at product introduction, so prudent path is to take it slowly. On a line that is well established, while every vehicle gets an inspection, and one in a bunch gets a more thorough one, when new, each gets more checks until the process is totally vetted.
We are now 4 months on from when first cars were meant to be delivered and very very few customer cars have been delivered in the UK.
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      03-18-2014, 07:51 AM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cc3 View Post
We are now 4 months on from when first cars were meant to be delivered and very very few customer cars have been delivered in the UK.
Strange. In oslo you see them all the time now. Almost 300 delivered in February. I am very happy with mine. Real fun to drive!
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      03-18-2014, 04:05 PM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cc3 View Post
We are now 4 months on from when first cars were meant to be delivered and very very few customer cars have been delivered in the UK.
Hard to say, but who knows...the vast majority of the rest of the world has the driver on the other side of the road...so, it may be something to do with moving things to the other side - maybe a different supplier. I'd guess the actual chassis is the same. Could be as simple as reject rate on the dashboard. Many of the other parts are the same, regardless of the driver's side.
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