Bmw 750li :Everything you want to know about ADV News, Photos & Exclusive stories.

BMW 750Li
How is the new 7 Series doing in the market – and how enamoured are customers by the gesture control?
We launch a new version of our flagship car every 7 years, and the flagship is the one that we put even more love and passion into because that’s where you take the barrier of technology to the next level. And this is the product that has all the features that will slowly percolate down the product range in the near future. So, it’s always a big effort. And, of course, when you bring new technologies into production for the first time, it’s always a big stretch for the engineering and production team. And the 7 Series is packed with the latest technology, from the carbon core construction to gesture control, and many more features, so I think it’s the most innovative car in its segment. And it’s been doing very well in India. We have quite a bit of demand for it right now, so we’re really happy with the market response.
Do any of your 7 Series customers actually drive themselves, because it’s such a great car to drive?
The 7 Series has a unique advantage in its segment in that it’s made for both purposes, so it’s also made to be self-driven – like a proper BMW! It feels like a much lighter, sportier car. It can be quite agile and responsive given its size. And that’s very important, as that’s the DNA of our brand. But, at the same time, it offers comfort that’s on par with our competitors – so you have the best of both worlds. Many of our customers have chauffeurs, but they also enjoy driving themselves.
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Driving dynamics play such an important role in the sales of your cars globally, how much of a role does it play in a market like India?
One always has to look at what the DNA of your brand is, and we’ve always been the brand of sheer driving pleasure and the joy of driving. That’s true across the world, and also in India. Even if people don’t drive as much as they do in other countries, they want to have a car that fits into the lifestyle of sporty driving – and it’s an expression of a lifestyle when you buy a product like this. We’ve done a lot of market research on this, and it’s very relevant even for India.
2016 has been a challenging year for you with the diesel ban affecting sales, how do you see the market progressing in the short term?
The luxury market is relatively small in India, it’s only 1% of the total passenger vehicles market – and it hasn’t been growing that much in the last three years. And this year was a difficult year with the diesel ban, tax hike, and so on, but BMW is doing very well. While most of our competitors are not growing, or even losing sales volume, we’re clocking growth rates of over 20% this year. We’ve introduced the brand new X1 and the 7 Series and a lot of other products, and we’re growing in every segment that we’re in right now. So, we’re very happy with our own performance, but we’re not very happy with how the market is looking and we’re hoping that, with a positive GST regime, we’ll have a favourable environment to be able to grow our business, further invest in the country and increase our footprint.
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How do you see GST playing out? 
It’s a historical tax reform. I mean it’s going to affect more than 1.2 billion people, so it’s huge and it really is a Titanic task that’s being achieved. We would have hoped that it would be more favourable, but at the moment the rates that are being discussed won’t bring that many benefits towards our business. Luxury cars today are already taxed very high in India, and that’s one of the reasons why the luxury car market is still very small. We hope that, in the next couple of years, little-by-little, the taxes will go down so we can develop our business. Again, you have to see that we’re producing in India – we’re bringing technology to the country, we’re developing skills, we’re creating jobs, we’re an integral part of the Make-in-India campaign, and we’re contributing to the economy. We’re part of an ecosystem, as other manufacturers are also benefitting from the technologies that we’re developing, so I think it’s time for the government to relax the taxation and let the customer choose the kind of car he or she buys – rather than have that choice tampered with by taxation.
With competition in the luxury sector getting increasingly aggressive, what’s your strategy to remain successful and how important is it to be number one in the luxury car space in India?
Success, for me, is measured in customer satisfaction, brand strength and also profit – and not in who’s number one, number two or number three. That is, of course, also an indicator – but that’s quite easy to steer. Most important is to have a business that is sustainable. A couple of years ago we had to make some adjustments in India, because the way the business was going was not very profitable and not sustainable for us. So we had to actively step in, and after three years, we’ve made a lot of changes to ensure that the business is on a stable footing – and now we’re really in a very strong position to develop our business in the future. Like I said before, we’re clocking growth rates of over 20%, while most of our competitors are not growing – so it shows that we did the right thing to fix the problem at the right time, before it became too big and out of our control.

Frank Schloder, Acting President, BMW India, accepts the award for the 750Li.

BMW 750Li
How is the new 7 Series doing in the market – and how enamoured are customers by the gesture control?
We launch a new version of our

We seem to find ourselves at the racetrack with this luxury sedan more often than not. Not only did we first test it at a racetrack in the US over a year ago, but we brought it to the Buddh International Circuit a couple of months ago in order to see if it could outpace BMW’s very own sports car – the Z4. Considering that the 750Li produces 450 horses and accelerates to 100km/h in under 5 seconds, we expected it to be competitive. What we didn’t expect was that the mammoth 7 Series would eclipse its more lithe sister by over 1 second. But that’s not all, because, when it comes time to the drive home from the track, it insulates you in a cocoon of luxury and technology.

<img alt="BMW 750Li Score Sheet" class="size-full wp-image-80391 alignright" height="269" src="/uploads/2016/11/BMW-750Li-Score-Sheet.jpg" width="343" />

Not only does the 7 Series drive like a bat out of hell when you want it to, but it also performs like the finest luxury limousine you can imagine. And it’s this breadth of sheer ability that makes it one of our best picks of 2016. Being a BMW flagship, you expect it to be packed to the gills with the latest technology – so, really, it’s not surprising that it has a tablet in the back seat to control the incredible number of features that you can play with back there, nor is it all that novel that you can control certain functions with hand gestures (that’s more of a party trick than anything else), or even the fact that it parks itself (a feature that’s not allowed in our market as yet because it uses radar) – it’s the fact that when you put all of this together, the 7 Series can do virtually everything. Because of what BMW calls a carbon core – which is, in fact, an intricate interplay of steel, aluminium and carbon fibre throughout the chassis and body, all of which yields a substantial weight reduction – the new 7 Series wafts like a land yacht on the road in Comfort mode and attacks corners like a sports car on the track in Sport Plus. And there aren’t many cars in the world that can put those two together, but this luxury sedan can – without batting an eyelid!

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BMW 750Li, Track Test

We seem to find ourselves at the racetrack with this luxury sedan more often than not. Not only did we first test it at a racetrack in the US over a

On a lousy workday, we decided to take the BMW Z4 to the racetrack. But, to spice things up, we added the BMW 7-Series 750Li to the mix to see if this luxury limousine matches the performance of the former on the track.

BMW Z4 vs BMW 750Li Video: BIC Track Test

On a lousy workday, we decided to take the BMW Z4 to the racetrack. But, to spice things up, we added the BMW 7-Series 750Li to the mix to see if this luxury limousine matches the performance of the former on the track.

Bmw 750li

Frank Schloder, Acting President, BMW India, accepts the award for the 750Li.

BMW 750Li, Track Test

BMW Z4 vs BMW 750Li Video: BIC Track Test

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