[EnI]

Bayerische Motoren Werke AG has finally filed a registration for a new trademark and logo for their project i vehicles (MegaCity Vehicle, VED etc):

BMW i





The following trademarks have also been registered: i1, i2, i3, i4, i5, i6, i7, i8 and i9.





What do you think?

[Dr. G]

Hmmm coool

[BenTrovato]

Maybe they can add the word Core in front of i3, i5 and i7 and change the BMW emblem to INTEL

[n0n_0perational]

Originally Posted by BenTrovato

Maybe they can add the word Core in front of i3, i5 and i7 and change the BMW emblem to INTEL

my first thoughts hahaha

[bmwF10]

Originally Posted by BenTrovato

Maybe they can add the word Core in front of i3, i5 and i7 and change the BMW emblem to INTEL

+1 xD

[ChPh]

Originally Posted by BenTrovato

Maybe they can add the word Core in front of i3, i5 and i7 and change the BMW emblem to INTEL

Or Apple, it's terrible

But I think will it be fwd cars sign?

[antzcrashing]

Originally Posted by GregA

Bayerische Motoren Werke AG has finally filed a registration for a new trademark and logo for their project i vehicles (MegaCity Vehicle, VED etc):

BMW i

Attachment 467779

The following trademarks have also been registered: i1, i2, i3, i4, i5, i6, i7, i8 and i9.

What do you think?

I highly doubt that there will be 9 variants of the megacity and VED. It seems BMW will have an i version of every series, 1 series i, 3 series i etc.

[Tegs4tugs]

Originally Posted by BenTrovato

Maybe they can add the word Core in front of i3, i5 and i7 and change the BMW emblem to INTEL

then we would stall on the highway then need a restart...lol

[southlight]

Originally Posted by antzcrashing

I highly doubt that there will be 9 variants of the megacity and VED. It seems BMW will have an i version of every series, 1 series i, 3 series i etc.

It's better to have the trademarks but not use all of them than to have fewer than you need.


Best regards,
south

[XYR03]

ipod?

[auggiem3]

Good point South - and I bet some entrepreneurial spirits try to take advantage of predicable possibilities on trademarks not unlike the early purchase of domain names by folks hoping to profit from their sale to large corporates like BMW.

Originally Posted by southlight

It's better to have the trademarks but not use all of them than to have fewer than you need.


Best regards,
south

[Jblack4083]

Can they trademark i3, i5, and i7 if Intel has already done so?

Either way, seems like we'll see varying sizes of these "i" vehicle but i doubt they'll use all the monikers they trademarked. They probably just took claim to all of them to keep options open. I do believe that its a sign we might see a 2 series or even a 4 series.

[southlight]

Originally Posted by Jblack4083

Can they trademark i3, i5, and i7 if Intel has already done so?

They can (assuming Intel has a trademark on these names at all). There are different trademark classes for different product types. Intel's trademarks would be in class 9 (computers), and the BMW trademarks would be in class 12 (cars) and class 28 (scale models).


Best regards,
south

[southlight]

A screenshot confirming the registration with the German patent office has been added to the first post.


Best regards,
south

[Ryan_T]

i8 and i9?

BMW Private jets? Or supercars...?

[esqu1re]

^ haha...need someone to start singing "like an i6, like an i6..."

[positiveions]

"i" see

[tony20009]

I think BMW will use the trademarks for one of the following:

• To name new models. BMW is running out of unique identifiers for cars as we observed with the 1 series M coupe
• To name models in a new line of cars made to compete with mass market brands in much the same way one sees with Honda/Acura, Toyota/Lexus

Of the two, I'm guessing it's the latter, but the former option is certainly plausible. I think it's the latter because as we know Audi already has a common-market brand and MB doesn't, unless you count the Smart Cars, which weren't a huge success outside Europe. I doubt BMW wants to be the last premier brand to have a mass market line. I think too that retaining the "i" theme exploits the existing goodwill of the BMW brand if applied to a common-market-priced assortment of vehicles. That's a slightly different strategy than we've seen with the other brands that have two main lines of vehicles.

Yes, we all know that Toyota and Lexus are the same company's cars. But what do we say about a Lexus? "It's a Toyota." With BMW's common-market-priced brand, one'd either have to call it a BMW or call it whatever it is. It doesn't suffer from linguistic downgrading as does Toyota and that's got to be a good thing from a marketing perspective.

I think too that BMW recognizes its cars (bought new) are outside the price range of the average buyer. That means they need to produce something that regular folks can afford if they are to grow in market share, particularly in the emerging markets such as China and India et al. I'm sure they have lots of technology and engineering from other cars that can be incorporated into new models and they can probably increase their price leverage with suppliers by increasing their volume, which would likely bode well for all BMW-brand buyers.

Moreover, as many of even the older BMW models are still better performers than a swarm of existing cars, it's quite possible, if the factories can still support producing them, that BMW may want to offer them as mainstream vehicles and use a new name on them. Consider an e46 or e36 versus most any of the mainstream cars one can buy such as Hyundai, Kia, Daihatsu, etc. I for one vastly would prefer to an e46 over any of those cars. And just how much could it cost for BMW to produce such a car and sell it as a mass market vehicle? If they can produce a well equipped version of the e46 and sell it to the masses for $20K to $30K, the masses get an excellent vehicle.

[scheherazade]

Originally Posted by tony20009

...
Audi already has a common-market brand and MB doesn't, unless you count the Smart Cars, which weren't a huge success outside Europe. I doubt BMW wants to be the last premier brand to have a mass market line. ...

I was always under the impression that MB is the common brand, and Maybach is the 'nice' brand - and the entire lineup is just scaled towards a slightly better off crowd of folks.

There's the C series for the regular folks, with a stripper E rounding things out.

The 3 isn't exactly unattainable, with a stripper 5 rounding things out.
BMW also has the 1 series, and will soon have the 2 series.




I do think that if BMW wants to make cheaper cars, they need to do it under a different brand than BMW.

Part of why people buy BMW's is for the "I have something exclusive" factor.

When you make them too affordable, and every Joe Smith has one, then you start to evaluate the brand less on symbolic value, and more as simple transportation.

That can't bode well for an up-scale make, since the only direction they have to go is down.

They need to maintain the psychology. Otherwise, the aura will fade, and people will start to ask "So, why does this thing cost more than a lexus?"

-scheherazade

[tony20009]

Originally Posted by scheherazade

I was always under the impression that MB is the common brand, and Maybach is the 'nice' brand - and the entire lineup is just scaled towards a slightly better off crowd of folks.

There's the C series for the regular folks, with a stripper E rounding things out.

The 3 isn't exactly unattainable, with a stripper 5 rounding things out.
BMW also has the 1 series, and will soon have the 2 series.
-scheherazade

Sure, $35-$45K isn't unattainable, but it's still more than the average person spends on a car. I know here in the DC area, that's not the case; BMWs and MBs (of all sorts) are extremely common. But in most of the world outside the Beltway, the average person doesn't spend $30 - $40K on a car, and s/he doesn't drive any sort of BMW or MB.

I understand that MB makes the Maybach, but nobody says (much less thinks) of a Mercedes: Ooh, it's the mainstream Maybach. And that goes directly to the point I was making above. A MB isn't a mainstream car; neither is any current model of BMW. I'm not saying there's anything particularly exclusive about either brand of car. I'm just saying that they cost more than what the masses spend on cars and that by definition makes them also not mainstream brands. Both brands have the opportunity to reap additional profits by dispensing their prior technology and engineering in a new automobile line (called something other than BMW or MB, which, given your comments, must be a point I didn't make clearly enough in the second bullet of my original post...) and selling them as mainstream vehicles.

Finally, I can assure you that no car maker is particularly looking to be exclusive; not one of them has that as their mission, though whatever their mission is, may yield exclusivity as a by product. Car buyers may want exclusivity, but car makers, and their stockholders, want to sell as many cars as they possibly can, to as many people as they possibly can, at a profit.

That we see many kinds of car makers -- from Kias to Maybachs -- is a function of there being a profitable way to make money at a wide variety of price points. If Bentley or Pagani could make their cars and profitably sell them -- I'm talking about making and selling exactly the cars they sell now -- for $24k each, they would because in the end, they'd make more money that way. For better or worse, the economies of scale haven't yet conspired to make carbon fiber and Connolly hides affordable to the general public.

[Touring]

What will be the marketing slogan? " I get it! " ?

[scheherazade]

Originally Posted by tony20009

Sure, $35-$45K isn't unattainable, but it's still more than the average person spends on a car. I know here in the DC area, that's not the case; BMWs and MBs (of all sorts) are extremely common. But in most of the world outside the Beltway, the average person doesn't spend $30 - $40K on a car, and s/he doesn't drive any sort of BMW or MB.

I understand that MB makes the Maybach, but nobody says (much less thinks) of a Mercedes: Ooh, it's the mainstream Maybach. And that goes directly to the point I was making above. A MB isn't a mainstream car; neither is any current model of BMW. I'm not saying there's anything particularly exclusive about either brand of car. I'm just saying that they cost more than what the masses spend on cars and that by definition makes them also not mainstream brands. Both brands have the opportunity to reap additional profits by dispensing their prior technology and engineering in a new automobile line (called something other than BMW or MB, which, given your comments, must be a point I didn't make clearly enough in the second bullet of my original post...) and selling them as mainstream vehicles.

Finally, I can assure you that no car maker is particularly looking to be exclusive; not one of them has that as their mission, though whatever their mission is, may yield exclusivity as a by product. Car buyers may want exclusivity, but car makers, and their stockholders, want to sell as many cars as they possibly can, to as many people as they possibly can, at a profit.

That we see many kinds of car makers -- from Kias to Maybachs -- is a function of there being a profitable way to make money at a wide variety of price points. If Bentley or Pagani could make their cars and profitably sell them -- I'm talking about making and selling exactly the cars they sell now -- for $24k each, they would because in the end, they'd make more money that way. For better or worse, the economies of scale haven't yet conspired to make carbon fiber and Connolly hides affordable to the general public.

I'm on the same train of thought for most of what you said.



The bentley and pagani example I don't quite agree with.

They make a product that's uncommonly-engineered and expensive, and that in itself is the draw of their brand. It's why they get customers.

If they were affordable and many people had them, they wouldn't be useful as a 'show off my wealth' item (lose a selling point)

If they were scaled down in engineering, then they wouldn't stand out on that front either, and they would have to compete in the ocean of cars that are similar. (lose another selling point)

Selling a mass-market car, for them, would place them in a market segment of high competition.
Whereas now, they can afford to not make the tough mass-competitive choices, and can simply make the product they want to make first.
I suspect that from the POV of the owners/builders/designers, they are where they want to be, and the common-markets are none of their concern.



Which all harkens back to the concept of diluting the brand (where it applies to BMW and MB).

I totally agree that BMW would love everyone to buy one of their cars.

However, like you mentioned, people want the exclusivity. It's an important selling point.

BMW needs to carefully choose at what economic strata they want to split into another brand - so that they don't lose that important selling point.

Balancing affordability (to move cars), and exclusivity (to attract buyers), is the dilemma.

Up-scale buyers can easily say :
"My street has too many BMW's, I think I'll buy an MB"

If that happens too often, then all BMW would accomplish is a growth in down-scale sales, and shrinkage in up-scale sales - transforming the company into a brand like toyota/honda that caters heavily to affordability.

Which may not even matter.
Do I care? Do you care? Does anyone care? Does it matter?
It's simply a change. A change that I know lots of folks would prefer to be without.





Granted that I'm talking about the emotional buyers. Those that buy a car on how it makes them feel emotionally.
It's a very large group.

But none of this affects the other group of buyers. Those that evaluate cars on the technical aspects and features, and couldn't care if 1 or a million people drove them.

While I personally lean towards the 'technical evaluation' side, I know a lot more people that simply 'adore the aura', and see the badge first and the car second (eg. they say "that's a nice car" without knowing anything about it - other than who makes it.)
That's a group that easily converts to buyers - a group that's not to be alienated.

That's just my personal experience. I could have the wrong impression. I could be totally wrong.

Just saying...

-scheherazade