On the matter of green cars for the very near future, BMW has spoken, and the word is REx, or range extending. BMW’s dazzling new “i” cars will have electric motors and small gasoline engines rather than electric motors only that limit you to 75 to 100 miles. That’s a sudden shift for the smaller BMW i3 city car, which was to have been an electric vehicle (EV) only and now will be offered with a gasoline engine option.
The BMW i8 sports car was always designed as battery-mit-gasoline-engine vehicle. With their swoopy carbon fiber bodies, both look like the auto show concepts that never get beyond auto shows. In fact, they are just two years from production, and they are likely to look pretty much like the concept cars unveiled Friday in Munich (video below).
The BMW i3 is a four-passenger city car 151 inches long, slightly longer than a Mini Cooper, that weighs just 1,250 kilograms or 2,756 pounds, about 600 pounds lighter than the Nissan Leaf electric vehicle that is two feet longer. The i3 length suggests the back seat is for occasional use. The i3 carbon fiber body will be incredibly strong, incredibly light, and incredibly difficult and costly to form. BMW isn’t talking price on the i3, but it could easily be a $50,000 car with the carbon fiber and the BMW brand premium. (The Nissan Leaf base price is $33,000; the Chevrolet Volt is $41,000.) BMW projects 80-100 miles on electric power, six hours to fully charge the battery, and one hour to 80% charge with a special charger. The hybrid version might have a smaller battery pack to make room for the gasoline engine and fuel tank.
The exact details aren’t yet known, but it’s very likely that the i series will also have heavy doses of technology to help with automatic parking, telematics to help you avoid traffic jams at least in theory (try finding an uncrowded alternate route in Beijing), and front protection to identify and warn of possible collisions, like Volvo City Safety.
As BMW expands, it has bought up existing brands and created new sub-brands. It bought Rover (didn’t work; jettisoned), Mini (smashing success), and Rolls-Royce (also doing well). To expand to newer markets, especially the big cities of Asia, BMW created the Megacity brand, which has been renamed the i brand, a troublesome name for everyone whose English-language spell-checker autocorrects i to I. But at least it’s short and snappy and sounds like there’s an Apple connection.
Why the gasoline engine on the i3? When BMW showed concepts of the i cars as far back as 2009, the city car (i3) was described as an electric vehicle (EV). BMW in 2008 built 400 Mini E electric prototypes that were quick, quiet, fun, and didn’t go more than 100 miles. According to people who won a chance to be test-lease-drivers, a lot of them wanted the Mini E to be their only car — notwithstanding that the back seat was now full of batteries and the trunk held only a couple bags of groceries — and needed more than 100 miles of range. Thus BMW’s announcement that there’d be two versions of the i3, one the expected EV that would be a lightweight Nissan Leaf (our words, certainly not BMW’s), plus the REx version that adds a range-extending gasoline engine, making it more like the pioneering Chevrolet Volt.
Another term for a Volt-like car is plug-in hybrid. The on-board batteries are typically good for 20-40 miles, not just the 1-2 miles you get from a hybrid such as the Toyota Prius. At night, you plug in the battery pack and it recharges in one to eight hours, depending on how powerful (expensive) the charger is. Even on regular household current (120 volts), a car like the Volt fully recharges overnight. The magic of battery-powered cars is their efficiency. A power plant creates the equivalent energy at a cost that’s like driving with gasoline that costs $1 to $1.50 a gallon.
The BMW i8 is a high-end sports car capable of getting almost 50 mpg. Since there were no last-minute changes to the i8, the details are firmer: electric motor driving the front wheels, three-cylinder turbocharged gasoline engine and automatic or automated manual transmission driving the rear wheels. The two combine for 349 hp and 0-60 acceleration in about 4.5 seconds, enough to keep pace with the neighbor’s Ferrari. In real world driving, the BMW i8 might get 33 to 47 mpg, the company says, and on the European testing cycle, it’s rated at 87 mpg. The i8 will have a smaller battery pack than the i3 and an electric range of about 20 miles, still enough for most daily commutes. It’s the perfect car for driving from Beverly Hills to the Citation Jet waiting to whisk you off to Jackson Hole.
Here’s one difference between the i8 and the Chevy Volt. BMW has a through the road hybrid system that lets the gasoline engine recharge the battery while under way. Once the Volt battery with a series hybrid configuration is depleted in 35-40 miles, the battery stays that way until you plug it in again (excepting energy regenerated braking or going downhill). Remember, using a gasoline engine to recharge is less efficient that your electric outlet, but having that big battery charged at all times means you can unleash the i8 for an electrifying dash up an Alpine mountain with 50% more power available than the gasoline engine alone provides.
The BMW i8 will have a footprint almost the same as BMW’s hot M3 sports sedan: 182 inches long, 77 inches wide. The 3,263-pound weight undercuts the M3 by more than 500 pounds and the claimed 4.6 seconds 0-60 mph is almost a half-second faster. However, it will cost 2-3 times as much as an M3. BMW officials offered a ballpark estimate that translates from euros to dollars at about $170,000.
The BMW i cars use a lifedrive architecture, which refers to a body made of carbon fiber reinforced plastic that provides low weight and extreme safety. Race cars make extensive use of carbon fiber, as do the Boeing 787 and high-end motorcycle helmets. None of them come cheap. Another BMW buzzword to know is efficient dynamics, which is BMW’s uber-concept for cars that are, well, efficient and sporty (dynamic). Broadly it means downsizing from ten to eight to six cylinders, often by adding turbocharging; using lighter materials; wringing the most out of engines; building start-stop into vehicles that turn off at stoplights then power up again; adding hybrids and now plug-in hybrids; and being a good corporate citizen, for instance using methane gas from a South Carolina landfill to provide nearly half the power for BMW’s SUV factory in Spartanburg, S.C. The BMW i3 and i8 will be built in Leipzig in Germany.
The i brand comes as the world’s automakers move to build more efficient cars with smaller carbon footprints. The US has been promoting a corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) of as much as 62 mpg, and two days before the i brand announcement, President Obama set it at 54.5 mpg in 2025. In real world terms, a CAFE of 54.5 mpg is around 40-45 mpg in the real world. Still, it’s a big jump up and that’s the reason for more efficient cars such as BMW’s i series — and ultimately, this is all a teaser for BMW’s further announcement at the mid-September Frankfurt Auto Show and production of the cars in 2013. In between, the i8 makes an appearance in this fall’s movie, Mission Impossible 4.
