I found a blog called Triple Pundit - People, Planet, Profit - which purports to discuss sustainable business practices. As a reflection of the difficulty of practicing both sustainability and profitability, some articles impress me and some depress me.
 
After attending a presentation by BMW’s Manuel Sattig at Opportunity Green 2011, a guest author rethinks some reservations TriplePundit has expressed about other EVs in The BMW i3: Advancing Automotive Sustainability: 

It turns out that among auto manufacturers, BMW is one of the most sustainable in the world. It was ranked as the second most sustainable global vehicle manufacturer by Newsweek this year, and is the only car company that has been ranked on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index every year since the index’s inception. Now BMW is using it’s expansion into the electric vehicle business as an opportunity to question and rethink their entire business. According to Sattig, BMW is pursing “electro-mobility,” a concept that goes beyond just producing greener cars by redefining the meaning of personal mobility.
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BMW’s first mass produced electric vehicle will be the BMW i3 which is scheduled for release in 2013, and will be followed by a sporty plug-in hybrid, the i8 in 2014. In designing these two vehicles, BMW looked at its entire value chain to identify ways to reduce its environmental impacts. To address the issue of raw materials sourcing, the company replaced 80 percent of the aluminum and 25 percent of the plastics used in the car with either recycled material or new material produced using renewable energy. BMW worked with the SGL Group for the cars’ carbon fiber components which are manufactured using hydropower, reducing the associated carbon emissions by 50 percent. Both cars will be produced in BMW’s Leipzig plant in Germany using 100 percent renewable energy. This plant has the leanest production system in the European auto industry. As part of the expansion of the factory, BMW improved the space as a working environment by incorporating more natural light and reduced sound levels 50 percent by eliminating the need for a steel press.
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Instead of taking a car and simply swamping out the combustion engine for an electric drive system, BMW has rethought and redesigned the entire vehicle for its most promising application – as an emission-free urban mode of transport that’s just as innovative and intelligent as its owner is likely to be.

BMW's cradle-to-cradle efforts sound laudable - like Passiv Haus - but are out of sync with comments by BMW's North American CEO Jim O'Donnell, reported by Detroit News, and blogged by TP in April:

O’Donnell disagrees with Renault-Nissan CEO, Carlos Ghosn’s prediction that 10% of vehicles will be electric by 2020. I think O’Donnell’s might be a reasonable position, especially if we look to the adoption rate of hybrids as a proxy for the adoption rate of EV technology. ...
 
O’Donnell [asserts] that EVs won’t work for 90% of the population based on battery range. Since he works for the company that has field tested EVs via the Mini E brand (which BMW owns), I wonder to what extent he has drawn this conclusion from his company’s own data?

My reaction is that perhaps BMW sees EVs as part of a niche, but a very lucrative niche, and suspects that greenwashing alone won't win over that group of customers. 
 
But in June, another TP article, Why Sustainability Needs a Makeover, asserted that sustainability has to be more than a niche strategy:  

Half of Americans think green products are targeted to rich elitist snobs or crunchy hippies. These are not particularly appealing archetypes, especially for something that needs a critical mass. If we want sustainability to reach the mainstream, we need to stop with the niche marketing. As OgilvyEarth’s Freya Williams says, we need to be Bud Light, not Stella Artois. A return to Marketing 101, with a goal of mass appeal, would rely on the fact that humans have a herd mentality and the majority of us just want to fit in. OPower embraces this and influences people to reduce their energy use by comparing them to their neighbors.
 
82% of respondents said going green “is more feminine than masculine.” Sustainability emblems include tote bags, hemp clothes and smaller cars. No wonder green skews female. The new ad featuring a polar bear thanking a man for driving a Nissan Leaf is a good example of how messaging for this electric car doesn’t match up to what appeals to males in conventional car ads. Tesla Motors, the electric answer to the Porsche, is an excellent example of bridging the gap.
 
The words “green” and “sustainability” have been stigmatized. It’s in our best interest to drop these terms if we want to bring new people to the table. Method is a great example of a successful sustainable company that doesn’t position itself as “green.”
 
Guilt-provoking messages don’t inspire behavior change. Sustainability should be framed through fun experiences, not sacrificing oneself for the greater good. Research shows that people are motivated by doing things they enjoy and not by righteousness.

Frankly the idea of people targeting green products at me creeps me out in a way that BMW's approach does not - even though I'll never be able to afford a Bimmer. Creepier still is another article, Green as a Status Symbol: Why Increased Prices May Increase Sales, suggesting that high prices may be a motivation to buy green: 

It seems the simple answer would be to find a way to make green products cheaper [but] consumers are willing to purchase green products, even those seen as inferior to traditional products in quality, at a higher price, but not when the price is lowered.
 
Why? Because of the social status associated with the sacrifice of paying a higher product for the good of the environment. The research indicates that this status motive declines when the price of the green product is lowered because the element of sacrifice no longer applies. These results are not only interesting, they also provide some very valuable insight into consumer behavior that could, in theory, be used to promote the sustainability movement and increase demand for green goods.