Chinese EV Company Nabs BMW i3, i8 Devlopment Team

BMW has lost the core development team of the i3 and i8 cars to a Chinese company called Future Mobility.

In case you didn’t notice, China’s interest in sustainable transport and personal automobiles is quite high, as multiple local electric-vehicle companies compete to come up with the best possible electric-driven automobile. Backed up by big multinational and investment companies, Chinese car manufacturers are very serious about materializing their projects, investing a lot of time, money and effort in them.

Bloomberg reports that Dirk Abendroth, Benoit Jacob and Henrik Wenders will join Future Mobility Corp. a Chinese startup backed by Tencent Holdings, as vice presidents of software and connectivity, design, and marketing, respectively, according to people familiar with the matter, who preferred to remain anonymous. More interestingly, these three execs will join another former i8 project manager, Carsten Breitfeld, hired to be Future Mobility’s chief executive officer.

However, this doesn’t mean that we’ll see competitive BMW-rivaling, Chinese-branded automobiles in the near future, as neither of these companies have manufactured cars before. Moreover, the automakers – and the Chinese government – seek to innovate their own automotive industry at first.

Scouting capable key individuals appears to be a common practice in the E.V. industry, as Apple recently hired a Tesla engineer.