BMW’s radical new i8, although priced high, is actually a vision of the future of motoring, says KUSHAN MITRA
When you fly on a Boeing 777-300ER, during take-off, two huge GE90 engines strain to provide over 1,000 kilonewtons of thrust to lift 350 tonnes of aeroplane, fuel, passengers and champagne up in the air. But here is the funny thing, once the hard work has been done, the job of sustaining flight at up to 40,000 feet takes minimal amounts of engine power.
Heck, some 777s are certified to fly for five hours over the Pacific Ocean on just one engine. And even then the single engine is gently humming away at less than a quarter of its potential. With both engines running, the pilots put them into what is called ‘Flight Idle’ mode, where the engines are just about ticking over.
The reason we are bringing up the aviation analogy is because of the car you can see on this page today. The BMW i8, is one of the most futuristic supercars in the world, and definitely the most advanced piece of kit on Indian roads and a car that costs more than a small plane.
Why is this car futuristicIJ Well, it is not just because of its looks, and we will get to that a bit later. This is because of the BMW i8’s incredible drivetrain. Usually when you are paying top dollar for a supercar, you expect to open the rear cover and see a huge thumping lump of machined aluminium with titanium bibs and bobs. The engine is a very important reason why you buy a supercar.
The problem is that in the i8 you lift the rear cover, and see a little bit of storage space. lift another flap and you finally see the engine cover for a 1.5-litre 3-cylinder engine. This is from the same family of engines that BMW fits in the latest generation of MINI. And while with some fairly advanced engineering and a few waves of a magic wand, BMW has managed to eke out a fairly incredible 231-horsepower out of this engine, it is just the base ingredient in the i8’s secret sauce.
The seasoning is provided by what is between the front wheels, the electric motor that draws its charge from a lithium Ion battery that sends 131-horsepower to the front wheels. Combined, the BMW i8 has 362 horsepower. That might sound like a lot, but doesn’t come close to the new M3/M4 which has 414 horsepower, let alone the 550-horsepower plus unit under the bonnet of the M5. Yet, the i8 can accelerate at a rate as fast as either of its purely-petrol powered siblings and go fast enough. In fact, the i8 has a similar 0-100 time as the M3.
Part of the reason is because of the way the i8 looks. This car is extremely slippery through the air and it isn’t just because the car sits low to the ground, so low in fact that ingress and egress are extremely clumsy thanks to the scissor doors; particularly if you are a person with a slightly high Body Mass Index. The rear light cluster is shaped like an angled spoiler, vents, dams and inlets are placed around the car. As a result the car has a coefficient of drag of just 0.26. Although, that oddly is higher than both the new C-Class and S-Class from Mercedes, but still remarkable for a performance car which also needs drag both for stopping and increased grip.
Then again there is the fact that this car’s chassis is almost exclusively constructed from lightweight materials. As you open the doors you notice the naked carbon-fibre weave. And everything else is superlight as well, the other panels are mostly screw-on or clip-on plastic panels which BMW claims will keep repair costs low. Even though the battery pack weighs a bit, the kerb weight of the car is around 1,500 kilograms with near perfect weight distribution.
But the most important reason that this car can get from 0-100 kilometres per hour in 4.4 seconds is because when you floor the accelerator, what happens is mind-boggling. Not only does the turbo on the small petrol engine spool up quickly, you notice the power output metre (instead of the standard rev-counter on most cars) rise rapidly to 100 per cent. But this is where the electric motor kicks in as well. The response, is quite literally, electric.
Much like the Boeing 777 at the top of this piece, the i8 needs the power to get up to speed. Once at a certain speed the car requires next to no energy to maintain it. And visible evidence of that fact is on the power metre, to maintain a steady 100 kilometres per hour, the car engine is using just an eighth of its available power. But the great part is that the engine is also acting as a generator recharging the batteries as you drive at a steady speed. This is where the car’s shape, size and advanced aerodynamics come into play.
But eventually you need to apply brakes and like in most hybrid cars, the i8 also uses a flywheel attached to the brakes to generate electricity. The 96 kilowatt electric motor can also be charged from a domestic power outlet at home, and according to BMW the car’s battery charges up in about three hours.
This is important because there is also an all-electric drive mode which gives the car a range of around 36 kilometres. Not huge, but considering the length of the average daily commute in city traffic, that is actually more than enough. And whenever you need a bit more power, the petrol motor kicks in. Frankly, this is the best of both worlds, and also clearly the future of cars.
If there are some negatives about the i8, it has to be the noise which is artificially generated. It does not sound the same as having a huge throbbing mass of metal behind your shoulders. And while carmakers do their utmost to keep vibrations down, there is a tingling sense of excitement when you can actually feel eight, 10 or 12 cylinders move rapidly.
The other negative is of course, the price. At around Rs2.5 crore, this is not what you would call cheap. The BMW i8 is not as fast as other similar cars such as the Mclaren P1, Ferrari laFerrari or the Porsche 918 which also boost the output from a petrol engine with electric power.
But all of them have much larger petrol engines and extremely limited range on the electric motor alone. The Ferrari actually only uses the electric motor as a booster lacking an all-electric mode. But those are hypercars that cost over $1 million which would make an Indian imported version cost between Rs14-15 crore. So compared to these hypercars, the i8 does seem like extremely good value. And it does look so, so good.
And there is another thing, thanks to the combination of the batteries and a small petrol engine, the i8 delivers phenomenal fuel economy. BMW advertises 47 kilometres per litre, but even when driving with a leaden right foot, this car delivered a fuel economy that would make an Indian small car proud.
For more better than it is worse, the i8 and its family hatchback sibling the i3, which is yet to be launched in India, are the future of the motorcar. Sure, there are small kinks that the engineers at Munich will iron out and as battery technology develops, your columnist’s experience on a wet July morning will be a totally normal one in a few years.