One ahead of his time.
There are cars that, for one reason or another, are misunderstood. In many cases of dealing with vehicles ahead of their time, precursors to which the passing of the years gives the place they deserve. BMW has the occasional case in its history, the most recent being that of a hybrid sports car with a three-cylinder engine.
This configuration, which today is still peculiar, not so much because of hybridization but because of having a three-cylinder as a central element, is what gave life to the now extinct BMW i8, a peculiar and different proposal from what they offered. his contemporaries.
The sports car was born in 2014, a time when electrification was not in its infancy, but when it certainly did not enjoy its current popularity and omnipresence. It was a long process for it to see the light, since its germ was found five years further back, with the presentation of the BMW Vision EfficientDynamics prototype.
This already advanced the design of the model, very sporty and with sculpted shapes, which gave enormous prominence to aerodynamics (CX of 0.26) and drew attention for details such as, for example, the opening system of its doors.
Special attention was also paid to lightness, using materials such as aluminum and CRFP, which allowed the weight to be contained to around 1,500 kilos, which was also perfectly distributed between both axles (50:50).
What, however, made it stand out in the market, was the fact that it was a plug-in hybrid car, something that at that time was not very popular in general and even less among sports cars.
The central element was a 1.5 three-cylinder turbo engine that developed a power of 231 CV. It acted on the rear wheels, while an electric block of 131 CV did the same on the front ones. In this way, the set delivers a power of 362 CV.
His journey had another highlight in 2017, since that year the long-awaited convertible version was launched, which was accompanied by a mechanical update.
Maintaining the same base, it went on to mount a higher capacity battery (11.6 kWh) and to improve the electric motor, which gained 12 CV to reach 143 CV and thus raise the overall power to 374 CV. Thanks to this, it managed to accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h in 4.4 seconds, while its electric autonomy, with 55 km, gave it the ZERO label from the DGT.
