We were promised flying cars, teleportation and hover boards. We don’t have any of that. But now we have this: The BMW i8 and it’s a future that cannot get here soon enough.

My body hurt. My mind was numb. I had just spent a week in Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show and was ready to fly home. But first I had to drive a brand-new 2015 BMW i8 to L.A. It’s a rough job, but someone has to do it.

The i8 is BMW’s latest supercar, able to go 0 to 60 in about 4.4 seconds with its hybrid electric/gas powertrain. The i8 looks like a Hot Wheels car, handles like a supercar and is as expensive as a high-end Porsche. With a starting price of $135,000, this isn’t the car for everyone. It’s actually a gateway into BMW’s other hybrid, the cute and cheap BMW i3, a shorter, sporty runaround that BMW is touting as their answer to crunchy hybrids from Honda, Nissan, and Chevy.

I set out, gassed up and fully charged. My time with the i8 was short. I had already spent several days cruising around Vegas where the i8 got more attention than the volcano in front of the Mirage. The car stopped traffic. People gawked from sidewalks and leaned out of cabs to snap pictures.

Stopping at a gas station was an exercise in patience. Everyone had to take a picture and tell me a story about a car they once loved but totaled. It got the most attention parked at a hotel across from CES where most thought it was part of BMW’s trade-show exhibit.

Nope, she was all mine for the next couple of days.

Since the i8 lacks a proper trunk, I jammed my luggage in the back seat and took off to LA down I-15. The sun was shining and the traffic was light. I didn’t plan on taking the quick route all the way to my airport hotel some hundred miles away. Nope, I had all day to get there and was going to make the most of my time with the i8. I turned off the expressway at the first sign of the Mojave National Preserve and found what I was looking for: empty desert roads. I smiled and I assume the i8 did as well.

It’s astounding BMW made the i8 at all. It’s a concept car turned production car. BMW released the stunning concept in 2009 at the height of the recession. Now, some five years later, I’m sitting on the side of an empty road with the i8’s scissor doors open and admiring the desolate beauty outside Las Vegas. All I can hear is a slight whine from the hybrid electric powerplant ready to be abused.

Nestled somewhere within the i8’s frame is an electric motor and tiny 3 cylinder, 1.5L turbocharged engine. They work in tandem to power the i8. The results will make treehuggers and gearheads equally happy.

When driven in hybrid mode, the i8 is quick and plentiful. It can go about 15 miles on effectively just electric power. When the gear shift lever is kicked over to sport mode, the i8 becomes exhilarating.

In either mode it’s quick off the line and at speed. Stomp the right pedal to the floor and the i8 flies to 60 mph in 4.4 seconds. Even more impressive, though, is when passing is required. As I understand it, the powertrain uses the electric motor to give the moving car an instant boost and then seconds later the 3 cylinder engine takes over. The car leaps forward with supercar might and plants occupants into the seats.

The car simply thunders when driven in sport mode and hugs the roads like a modern supercar should. BMW piped some of the engine noise back into the cabin through the audio system. Sure, that might be cheating a bit, but the notes are genuine and raw. I found the sound to be the most surprising thing about the i8. I simply wasn’t expecting the hybrid to sound so mean.

Read more: Tech Crunch

We narrowed the field down to five nominees for the 2014 Tech Car of the Year award at the beginning of December, and now CNET’s judges have weighed in on our final choices. There were some strong contenders, making a unanimous choice difficult, but there can only be one…

Winner: BMW i8

This car represents a marvel of innovative engineering. Carbon fiber in its construction not only keeps the weight down, but cheaper production of this material could make it a standard for cars of the future. BMW took a risk with the design, putting something on the road that looks like it should still bear a concept label. LED headlights make for another important touch, along with a head-up display and driver assistance features. Judge Tim Stevens noted that “it’s undoubtedly one of the most interesting new cars on the road.”

With an electric motor driving the front wheels and a compact gasoline engine at the rear, the i8 combines all-wheel drive with plug-in hybrid fuel efficiency. However, in the same car you can experience a thrilling driving experience, eating up corners with this nimble ultimate driving machine. Judge Wayne Cunningham notes that the i8 “is an extraordinary technical achievement.”

Finally, BMW’s iDrive cabin electronics system sneaks in an impressive roster of connected features. The car comes with its own data connection powering online destination search and built-in apps. iDrive gets expanded features through the ConnectedDrive app on a driver’s smartphone, bringing in everything from social media to online music.

The Audi A3 came in as our favorite runner-up, embodying near-perfect connected cabin tech, but its drivetrain didn’t represent a significant advance. Also up for serious consideration was the Infiniti Q50S Hybrid, an amazing technical achievement with its drive-by-wire steering and efficient gasoline-electric drivetrain. Fan favorite the Tesla Model S made the nominees list for its impressive drivetrain, but when we reviewed the 2014 P85 Plus model earlier this year we didn’t find much advancement in its cabin electronics, and it still lacked any driver assistance features. Tesla’s recent update of the Model S addresses some of those issues, so we will likely be reconsidering it for next year. The Ford Fusion Energi made our nominee list for its excellent driver assistance features and economical plug-in hybrid drivetrain, but its cabin tech couldn’t carry it over the top.

Read more: CNET

The BMW i3 has overcome strong resistance to become the first all-electric car to take out the Wheels magazine car of the year award.

German manufacturer BMW bettered fossil-fuelled rivals including last year’s winners Volkswagen, who have taken out the honour three times in the last six years, to be crowned for the first time in the award’s 52-year history.

Wheels editor Glenn Butler said the i3’s victory serves notice to its combustion-engined competitors that the electric cars are here to stay.

“This year the future has arrived in the form of a seriously good motor vehicle … that just happens to run on electricity,”

he said.

“There is no novelty factor involved here either.

“It ushers in a new era of eco-performance for millions of families and urban commuters around the world, and in Australia.”

Judges described the i3 as innovative and praised BMW’s “bravery” to produce the electric-engined car.

“Other brands surely possess the know-how to have created something equally visionary; all they lacked was BMW’s bravery,” they said in a statement.

“This innovative and compact electric car combines expressive design, impressive engineering, exceptional efficiency and persuasive practicality with a good deal of driver appeal.”

“It is both admirable and desirable.”

The Wheels award has been running since 1963, when the Renault R8 took out the prize.

The last Australian-built car to win the award was the Holden VE Commodore in 2006.

Read more: 9 News

Looks like the sports car of the future but does it actually drive like one? Take two in the BMW i8

The ‘real world’ offering in the rarified league of carbon fibre petrol-electric sports cars, the BMW i8 is no P1, LaFerrari or 918 Spyder in performance terms. Not that anyone who sees it seems to care. Indeed, while all of the above could slip by innocent bystanders as ‘just’ normal supercars the i8 has star quality in spades and is so obviously something new and different even non-car folk seem genuinely awe-struck.

Star quality that extends to whomever happens to be at the wheel too – pull up kerbside and by the time you open that carbon butterfly door you’ll have a small crowd and camera phone paparazzi waiting to hang on your every word about the driving experience. Crave the quiet life? Not the car for you…

That £99K starting price is interesting too, pitching the i8 directly into the line of sight of the serial 911 buyer who, just might, be looking for something a bit different or eying up electric friendly grants and congestion charging for driving to that City office block. Tempting as the F-Types, R8s, Merc-AMG GTs and similar alternatives at this price might be they all look a little dinosaur-like in the company of the i8, which achieves that rare thing of being incredibly expensive, exotic, unashamedly performance focused and yet totally socially acceptable too.

The IT crowd

Harris drove the i8 in the sympathetic surroundings of California and Matt had a go up in the wilds of Scotland but for this test we used the i8 in more everyday surroundings, hacking the daily commute and heading up the M1 for a meeting in the way anyone might use a ‘normal’ sports car like a 911. Electrically plumbed parking spaces at the office meant a chance to charge the battery for maximum EV goodness but the rest of the time it was just a case of jumping in and using it like any other test car.

First thought? Getting anywhere near that official 134.5mpg is going to require your very lightest loafers, the best the PH clogs could achieve being less than half that on a mixed commute of stop-start motorway traffic and a bit of urban crawl. OK, so it was winter and we’re soft enough to want heated seats on in addition to the rather more compulsory lights, wipers and similar. Still impressive for a 362hp sports car, not so much for a supposed eco champion even driven in a style intended to maximise regenerative charging opportunities and minimise intervention from the 1.5-litre petrol engine.

An inbound journey with barely any battery saw 45mpg; the return fully charged had the trip showing 99mpg running on mainly electric for the first five miles of urban driving before dropping to a less impressive mid 50s once on dual carriageways and motorway. Dig deeper into the i8 literature and these are actually more representative of BMW’s official expectations. Funnily enough that triple-digit combined figure has rather drowned that out though. There are tricks to be learned – following a tip from the delivery driver we enjoyed the fact Sport mode that keeps the petrol engine engaged also does an excellent job of charging the battery. A rather more sophisticated answer can be found by programming your route into the nav, whereupon the computers analyse the profile and calculates where to use petrol power, where to switch to electric and where the best re-gen opportunities may lie. Clever stuff.

Read more: Piston Heads

‘You really have to be cut out for the kind of attention this car will garner: it’s like being famous overnight’

The BMWi8 is sleek, fast, futuristic and, most of all, defiant. The rules are, if you want to be green, you have to be crap. These were laid down in stone by eco-friendly cleaning products, and reinforced by decades of dirty hippies. The i8 is flash, showy, outrageously fast – and the future: one day, all cars will be like this – lighter, run on batteries – or cars will have ceased to exist.

The hybrid electric motor drives the front wheels, the turbo-charged petrol-triple engine the back. Sure, it plugs into the mains now, but as soon as they perfect the solar battery, this car is going to be first in line to run on sun. The frame is carbon-fibre reinforced plastic, somewhat lighter than aluminium, tonnes lighter than steel.

The resulting drive is, in any of the modes – SPORT, COMFORT or ECO-PRO (I’m not shouting; this is what BMW calls them) – more like driving in a video game than driving a car: silent, smooth, otherworldly. The speed dial is projected forwards into space, so only the driver can see it. This is handy, I imagine, if your passenger habitually tells you to slow down. Mind you, in this car, your passenger is going to tell you to slow down anyway. I defy you, feeling so protected (a high window line makes the world seem quite far away) and so omnipotent (thanks to the crazy raw power), not to go too fast, or at the very least accelerate in an ostentatious fashion.

Before you drive the i8, though, you have to get in; the doors open upwards in a gull-wing fashion. My kid asked me if it could fly. There is always someone taking a picture of it, if not as you approach, certainly by the time you’ve got the key out of your pocket. One time, walking purposefully toward it, then suddenly exhausted by the effort of explaining why I had it, even though it wasn’t mine, I just took a photo with my phone and walked away. You really have to be cut out for the kind of attention this car will garner: it’s like being famous overnight.

The cabin is swish and intuitive; in the dark, it comes alive with illuminated blue piping. The seatbelts are bright blue and heavily redolent of the professional pitstop. The posture is low and luxurious in a Swiss-watch-advert kind of way (“I’m reclining like this because I can afford to, not because my back’s gone”).

The motorway is where it gets to show off. It can make a decent noise, for a start, some of it simulated (people like that). More relevant is the ease with which it takes everything, and its remarkable fuel efficiency: at speed, something like 50mpg, roughly the same as a Prius, which feels like you’re pushing it along with your own buttocks.

The prototype for the i8 was in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. I can’t figure out how Tom Cruise swung out of the low driver’s seat on his tiny little legs, but I can’t conceive of a more Hollywood-ready car.

Source: The Guardian

…

Finally in the spring, I saw my first i3, and it is absolutely a head turner; you have never seen a car like it; because there has never been a car like it. The first models I saw on the street were in an orange/pumpkin-like color combination, which, as my mother used to say, would not be my choice. I saw a pretty good looking one in white with black trim. The i3 in my driveway is, I love these lofty official color names, Laurel Grey Metallic with the BMWi frozen blue accent. I generally don’t like dark colors on a car; but I like this; and I love the hint of blue in the front grille and on the lower side door panels.

The BMWi series, the i3 I am driving and the space-age i8, are electric cars built from the ground up. 100% new. They didn’t just take a 3 series and put a new engine in; instead BMW designed an entirely new manufacturing process for what may be my favorite part of the entire car; what they call the “life module,” and I would simply call the interior or the cabin.

On the outside, I would say the BMW i3 has the footprint of a small car; around the same size as the Prius or the Leaf. But on the inside, the full cabin space has the similar total interior volume of a BMW 3 series. There is ample room and comfort from the single most important position; the driver’s seat.

Let me get all-superficial for a moment. The interior cabin looks great. I have the, more official names now, Giga Cassia Natural Leather & Carum Spice Grey Wool Cloth. It’s light, modern, and beautiful. The remaining trim in the cabin is all made from recycled woods and carbon fiber. I wish I had a study or man cave in my own home that looked as nice as the i3 does from the inside.

The easily adjustable heated seat has a great driving position; and there is, I don’t know a better way to describe it, a vastness to the front windshield. BMW says the car is equipped with super-ergonomic controls; I don’t know what that means, but what it means to me, is everything is easy to find and where it is supposed to be. The center console screen is right-sized, not at all tiny, and not too big; so the Sirius/XM/FM radio is easy to see and operate, as are all the maps and various ways the car communicates with the driver.

Prior to my i3 experience, I spent a few weeks behind the wheel of the BMW 6 series M, with every single bell and whistle imaginable. I don’t find that I am missing anything at all behind the wheel of the i3.

A few last interior notes. The car features what has long been colloquially described as suicide doors. Where the front doors open in traditional fashion and the smaller rear doors open out from the center. I find this actually easier in getting the kids in and out of the backseat. Speaking of the back seat, it is perfectly serviceable. My most frequent passengers are my kids and their friends. You can easily have yourself plus 3 passengers in the car. If you are taking the entire soccer team, this isn’t the right car for you. But I have never been stymied by lack of interior space. The rear hatch opens big and wide and has a perfectly fine amount of trunk space; and the back seat folds down flat if you are the type that takes your boogie board with you everywhere.

Now, to what matters most. How does the i3 drive? Perhaps I can engage you in a little demonstrative exercise. Please, indulge me. Snap your fingers. How long does it take from the moment you snap your fingers to the moment you hear the sound? That’s how fast the i3 is. Officially timed at 0–30 MPH in 3.5 seconds, my car is faster than that. You press on the accelerator and off you go. Boom. Real quick. Freeway acceleration shows absolutely no strain, and the i3 can keep up with and/or pass anything. It is a good thing that I drive to work at 5 a.m. in the morning. The steering is tight and responsive. The i3 is all electric AND all BMW.

Some EV drivers are very interested in wringing out every last watt of energy and translating that to mileage. If you are into those sorts of range games; the i3 has three driving modes. I am a “comfort” person all the way, there is also ECO PRO, and if Ed Begley Jr. were driving the car, ECO PRO+. The car features a brake energy regeneration system; oh, and at 124 MPGe, the EPA lists the i3 as the most efficient electric car sold in the U.S.

Many people have asked me for the years I have been driving electric, “what if you run out of juice and there are no charging stations around?” This fear has now been given an official psychological term; it is called “range anxiety,” and since the father of modern psychology Sigmund Freud was born in Austria, leave it to his German neighbors at BMW to cure this ill. My i3 has, as an option, something called a “range extender.” Basically, it is a small gasoline powered engine; and a super small gas tank; that in the event you absolutely run out of electric power, will provide power to the batteries of the i3 to keep you going. This device is pure Prozac to those who worry about these kinds of things. I never do worry; and in my 2500 mile test drive, I have purchased all told; one gallon of gas. O N E. Not going to the gas station is the single greatest reliever of most the anxieties I deal with.

A little bit more about range. The EPA says the i3 can travel 81 miles on a single charge, and a total of 150 miles if the range extender is used as well. In my own experience, and I like to go fast, I think those estimates are probably a little high if you drive like I do. On any given day I probably drive about 30 miles a day. Brentwood into Hollywood; an errand somewhere, some trip with the kids; and back home. I have more than enough pure electric power to last all day. I have taken the i3 on longer drives; from Brentwood to Hollywood, to Costa Mesa, to Diamond Bar and back home, all in one day, and I was fine. If you have a massively long daily drive, the i3 may not be for your needs.

Now the bottom-line about the bottom-line. Our pals at the EPA say “going electric” can save more than $9,000 in fuel costs if you drive an electric car for 5 years. We all know that gas is fairly inexpensive right now; but do you sincerely believe it will always stay that way?

The i3 represents a far cleaner, far more efficient, far better way to drive; both now and into the future. Before I accept my own award from Greenpeace, you should also know that the 2013 World Green Car of the Year was the Tesla Model S; the 2014 World Green Car of the Year is the BMW i3.

There are dozen of other features, including the self-parking feature of the i3, I didn’t dwell on because, to be honest, I haven’t used them yet.

What I want the most is the get from “A” to “B” with speed, style, safety and comfort. I was already sold on electric cars before I experienced the i3. Maybe I love the i3 so much because it just reinforces my own opinion that I was right to begin with. All that, and some amazing and impressive engineering breakthroughs that you really have to drive yourself to experience.

Source: Medium