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I think this progress is logical!
Like most projects within the automotive industry today, this is probably driven by cost reduction.
BMW already has 3 cyl 1.5l and 6 cyl 3.0l diesel engines in production. These engines, together with the 4 cylinder versions already share many common parts.
When they now developed a new high power output model of the 6 cylinder version they basically developed two parallell dual-stage turbocharging systems (i.e. cyl 1-3 feeds one small and large turbine and cyl 4-6 feeds the other two).
It's nothing strange that a system with 4 turbochargers that can be used on different engines (with higher volumes) will be cheaper in total than a system with 3 turbochargers for one single engine (with relatively low volumes).
I would expect that we will see a 3 cyl 1.5l diesel producing 200 hp and 400 Nm, or more, in the next 3 Series or maybe already in the next 5 Series (G30).
The development have already been done, but for the 6 cylinder version!
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