New BMW, built from Moses Lake carbon, debuts soon (slide show)
BMW’s new i3 energy-saving vehicle, built largely from carbon fiber manufactured in Moses Lake, will be unveiled to the public July 29 at parallel events in New York, London and Beijing.
The car will sport a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $41,350 and will hit showrooms in the first quarter of 2014.
That’s about $18,000 more than a Toyota Prius, the Seattle area’s archetypal fuel-efficient car, so a buyer might wonder what you get for the premium.
For starters, buyers will get a little bit of Washington state pride, because landing the $100 million factory that makes the carbon fiber for BMW’s newest car was a major victory for then-Gov. Chris Gregoire in 2011.
What BMW wanted was a facility that would make the fiber with “green energy,” in this case hydropower from Grant County’s dams on the Columbia River.
BMW touted the carbon fiber source in a July 21 release about the i3: “BMW i3’s commitment to sustainable urban mobility encompasses the i3 production facilities, where hydroelectric, wind and solar power are used to power the CFRP (carbon fiber reinforced polymer) production facilities in Moses Lake, Washington and the Leipzig, Germany assembly line.”
Just to be clear, the Moses Lake factory, a joint venture between German graphite company SGL Group and BMW, produces only spools of carbon fiber, not auto parts. The companies are completing an expansion this August that will double production to 3,000 tons of fiber, in the form of spools of carbon that are shipped to Germany.
The factory’s operation is simple: It uses electric power to turn synthetic fiber into pure carbon fiber, in an extremely controlled environment.
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