Milestone Carbon Fiber Electric Car Wins the Auto Industry’s Most Important Environmental Award at Los Angeles Auto Show

LOS ANGELES, CA (November 20, 2014) – BMW’s i3, an innovative electric car built with a lightweight carbon fiber passenger cell and an aluminum drive module, has been named Green Car Journal’s 2015 Green Car of the Year®, which was announced at the LA Auto Show. Green Car of the Year® finalists also included the Audi A3 TDI, Chevrolet Impala Bi-Fuel, Honda Fit, and VW Golf.

The Green Car of the Year® award is an honor widely recognized as the auto industry’s most important environmental accolade. Green Car Journal, the leading voice in the intersection of automobiles, energy, and the environment since the publication’s launch in 1992, celebrates the high-profile award’s 10th anniversary at the L.A. Auto Show this year.

“BMW’s i3 is a milestone vehicle in many respects and illustrates the automaker’s expansive vision of future motoring,”

said Ron Cogan, editor and publisher of Green Car Journal and CarsOfChange.com.

“It is purposefully designed with a small environmental footprint and zero emissions, offering the best features of an electric vehicle with the functionality of an available on board engine-generator that nearly doubles its battery electric range.”

The first all-electric vehicle to win Green Car Journal’s Green Car of the Year®, the i3 benefits from BMW’s years-long ‘project i’ initiative that focuses on future mobility and strategies for sustainable transportation. The result is a unique approach that finds the i3 embracing technologies, materials, and construction methods breaking new ground for a mainstream model. While the i3 is designed as a battery electric car, its optional REx gasoline engine-generator enables extended driving range with electricity created on board easing potential range anxiety.

“Unlike other manufacturers that build vehicles and then create advanced powertrains to go in them, BMW rethought the whole process of building a car from the ground-up, using new materials and techniques”

said noted TV personality and avid car collector Jay Leno, pointing out one of many strengths the i3 had going into the competition. Leno has been one of Green Car Journal’s Green Car of the Year® jurors since the award program launched in 2005.

Along with Leno, the Green Car of the Year® jury includes leaders of noted environmental and efficiency organizations including Jean-Michel Cousteau, president of Ocean Futures Society; Matt Petersen, board member of Global Green USA; Mindy Lubber, President of CERES; Kateri Callahan, President of the Alliance to Save Energy, and Dr. Alan Lloyd, President Emeritus of the International Council on Clean Transportation and former CalEPA Secretary and Chairman of the California Air Resources Board. The jury is rounded out by a smaller number of Green Car Journal editors.

The magazine’s extensive vetting process considers all vehicles, fuels, and technologies as the field of nominees is narrowed down to five finalists that significantly raise the bar in environmental performance. Vehicles that are all-new, or in the early stages of their model lifecycle, are considered and finalists must be on sale by January 1 of the award year. Availability and market significance are factors to ensure that models have the potential to make a real impact on improving air quality, reducing greenhouse gases, and promoting transportation efficiency.

As finalists for 2015 Green Car of the Year®, the Audi A3 TDI, BMW i3, Chevrolet Impala Bi-Fuel, Honda Fit, and Volkswagen Golf are additionally honored with Green Car Journal’s 2015 Green Car Product of Excellence™.

The most radical vehicle to emerge from any automaker in the past year — and likely the past decade — the BMW i3 looks and drives like nothing else on the road. You may call it a hatchback hit with an ugly stick or an an expensive way to travel 80 miles on a charge, but you’ll still miss the point of why we named it our 2015 Green Vehicle of the Year.

We’ve written before about the lengths BMW went to build a lightweight electric vehicle that would have unimpeachable green credentials. The carbon-fiber frame, narrow tires and drive system so wired to recover energy in coasting you really need only one pedal in everyday driving combine into a vehicle that’s more efficient at traveling a mile than any other available, including the Tesla Model S.

Driving the i3 — ours came with the 650-cc, two-cylinder range-extender engine that adds an addtional 80 miles of reach — is to revel in parsimony and goodness, and like the houses that hand out toothbrushes on Halloween, a bit of a buzzkill. The torque does arrive instantly, and the low center of gravity adds some fun in the chassis, but the tiny contact patch and suspension keeps such joy bottled up. The interior of open-pore eucalyptus and recycled plastic-fiber cloth looks inviting and jarring at first — as open and sporty as a fair-trade coffeehouse.

“No matter how funky and modern BMW makes its lights and window graphics,” said contributing editor Steve Siler, “it’s hard to get excited about a box with ultra-skinny wheels.”

Yet the panel of editors came to see the strategy behind the i3. The world has lived with automobiles for over 100 years, more than long enough for them to evolve into signifiers of our personalities. We expect form to follow function in even our wildest cars, from the spoilers and hood scoops on the Dodge Challenger Hellcat to the engine vents on the Alfa Romeo 4C’s rear decklid. But few automakers has ever been so enthralled by electric cars, so ready to embrace a low-carbon future, that they were willing to engineer a car that acts as a rolling billboard for saving energy. The BMW i3 was the first of this century, but it won’t be the last.

Source: Yahoo

The BMW i8 has become something of an iconic car ever since the company showed it off as a concept back in 2009 at the Frankfurt Motor Show.

The car represents the German manufacturer’s first attempt at a pug-in hybrid supercar. The sustainably-focused sports car is part built in BMW’s wind-powered factory in Dusseldorf and has a design focus on using sustainable materials.

However, the car’s engines are produced at BMW’s Hams Hall manufacturing facility near Birmingham. The new three-cylinder engine is capable of powering the i8 from 0 to 60mph in less than 4.5 seconds, all while the vehicle delivers as much as 135mpg.

Transport minister Baroness Kramer said that the engine is a perfect demonstration of the UK’s commitment to the low-carbon transport. She said:

“The British-made engine for this ground-breaking car demonstrates that the UK automotive industry is at the forefront of the production of high-quality, low emission car technology. As our recent commitment to invest £500 million in ultra-low emission vehicle design, production and adoption shows, we want the UK to be a world leader in the global transition to ultra-low emission motoring.”

Read more: Next Energy News

Here’s the official music video for Jason Mraz’s new song ‘Long Drive (We can take the long way)’ featuring the BMW i3.

Note, though, that it’s a little risqué (probably NSFW).

Source: YouTube via Inside EVs

The BMW i8 is the most significant and forward thinking car on the road today. This is BMW’s vision of the future, and, for once, the future is no longer doom and gloom. The future is a positive, thrilling place. A place that we want to be. Don’t be scared, gearheads, we’re going to be ok.

(Full Disclosure: BMW loaned us the i8 for five days. Five days where we couldn’t go anywhere without having someone’s jaw drop with a look like the future just drove by them. And that’s because it did.)

BMW’s i division is a huge gamble by the automaker. A company that has always been known for making “The Ultimate Driving Machine” was making a move into what are called “personal mobility products.”

Sounds sexy, right?

The i3 and i8 are meant to represent the future of motoring as BMW sees it. And thankfully that doesn’t mean soul sucking boredom. In the case of the i8, we have the 1.5 liter three cylinder from the Mini — which has been turboed to hell to make 228 horsepower and 236 pound feet of torque — sitting behind the driver. That charges the battery but also powers the rear wheels. Up front there is an electric motor producing 129 horsepower and 184 pound feet of torque.

Under normal conditions, the electric motor powers the i8. It can get up to 75 MPH under electricity alone and can go for about 20 miles on a full charge with no interaction from the engine.

But that’s not all. The electric and gas can work together to change efficiency to performance. Put the i8 in sport mode or slam the pedal down, and you get pure torque from the electric motor and revvy turbo goodness from the engine. Like the McLaren P1, LaFerrari, and Porsche 918, the i8 uses its electric motor to increase performance.

Read more: Jalopnik