**A Close Encounter with the BMW i8: A Review**

I do have to make a comment about the rear seats, I think they're there as a token gesture more than anything. I'm not too sure that there's a huge amount of headroom or legroom for somebody, but it's a 2+2 configuration, and there certainly is no luxury in terms of space when you put the sports mode on. You put your foot on the loud pedal, or electric pedal, or however you call it in an i8, it certainly has a turn of speed on it. When you lift off the gas, you've got this lovely whistle going on – it's like something from a spaceship. Gathering speed very quickly, sadly there are such things as speed limits in the UK, and I have to adhere to them. But I can imagine that if you drove this car, if you're not really careful, then the boys in blue are gonna take a big interest in you very quickly because it's a very, very fast car.

But in all seriousness, the i8 is a great feeling to drive. It really, really has something special about it. While I'm driving this car, I've got to compare it to the all-electric cars that I've driven. You know it's the kind of middle ground between full internal combustion engine and full electric – performance hybrid. And it's really interesting in the fuel economy figures for this. It depends on what type of mode you drive in and how you drive it, but they're huge. Certainly if you are just doing some gentle around-town driving, you're gonna be running on full electric and not using any petrol at all.

Performance-wise, it ticks those boxes too. I think it's really impressive, especially when compared to the other cars that I've driven in this class. It takes lots and lots of boxes – both performance-wise and economy-wise. And just think about how nice it is to have a car that can actually make you feel like a proper driver, without relying on fancy technology or complicated systems. It's just a great driving experience.

But what really sets the i8 apart is its unique sound. When you stop it, whistles come out – it's not something you're going to get bored of anytime soon. I mean, who wouldn't want to hear that? And even when you start moving again, there's this smooth, silky motion that just makes you feel like you're gliding over the road.

The suspension setup is pretty firm, but I've taken it down some country lanes on purpose – they're pretty narrow and rough tarmac. And the i8 handled them really well. There are no rattles in here; the seats are very comfortable and supportive. It's an impressive car this, with a nice urgency to it that just pulls you forward.

One of the nicest things about the i8 is its four-wheel drive system. Even though the drive comes from different power formats – petrol at the back, electric at the front – they work in unison together really nicely. So you know exactly where this car is going, and you can push it to the limit with confidence.

**Final Impressions of the BMW i8**

My final impressions of this car are that it's a car worth waiting for to drive. A very long time, in fact – they've been around since 2014, but I still think they look like they should be from 2020. They're so futuristic from the outside, and you know I've not seen an i8 alarm, which draws a crowd everywhere you stop – people just want to have a look.

However, getting in and out of the car is a little bit tricky. It's harder than it looks, especially for ladies wearing skirts – a technique is required! But it's a cracking piece of technology this car, with drives beautifully, performances that are really, really impressive both in full EV mode and in eDrive mode.

When you put it into the sports mode, you get the benefit of the internal combustion engine working with the electric drive, and it's a real corker. So yeah, very, very impressed – maybe I was wrong about hybrids being boring? Having driven a fully V Tesla Model X recently and then now this i8 – they're both amazing cars that really showcase what can be achieved in hybrid performance.

Thanks again to BMW UK for giving me access to this car through the great TV collective. You guys are always so helpful, and I'm grateful for it. And if you have enjoyed this video as much as I think you have, please give me a thumbs up, comment below – always welcome! If you haven't done so already, please subscribe to petrol ped for plenty more content to come. We've got some amazing stuff planned, including an upcoming collaboration with those guys – so stay tuned!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys and welcome to petrol ped see you join me behind the wheel of a BMW i8 and I'm still in the carpark because I basically wanted to do the whole starte thing with you it's just like when I drove the Tesla Model X and like the other week and basically there's no noise at all the car is on I just need to put it into drive mode take my foot off the brake and away we go in full electric so I have read so much about the BMW i8 and really this is the world's first hybrid supercar you think about when it first landed you know the only hybrid you're gonna get was a Toyota Prius so let's go out for a bit of a drive I've got I don't really know what to expect it's got biblical performance it's it's got this really lovely mix of turbocharged one and a half litre petrol engine powering the rear wheels electric engine or electric motor powering the front wheels I think this is going to be really good the production version of the i8 was launched in 2013 yet even today it looks like a car from the future beautiful sculpting around the rear lights lead the eye down flanks and those golden doors are just oh yes I'm liking that now there is a little bit of artificial noise generation going on in this car but that's all good by me because it's going in my ears and it sounds great and it really does sound great so I've got a relatively sure Drive today in this car and there's so much to talk about so much technology in here certainly this mix of this hybrid power unit I think we could probably talk about that all day long but let's kind of put it through its paces and just just have a see how it feels to drive I mean it looks awesome this car I mean I have to say this particular spec it looks more like something out of Batman's cave than a BMW dealership I just think it looks wicked the 1.5 liter turbo petrol engine produces 228 brake horsepower with an additional 139 bhp coming from the electric motor naught to 60 is dispatched in 4.4 seconds and the top speed is electronically limited to 155 miles an hour all-electric range is 23 miles electric electric so you're just poking through at 30 mile an hour village you're on full electric there's no internal combustion engine going on at all here and it is it's just evey quiet and you've got quite a substantial range just running on the electric if you wanted to in fact I've got a button on here I can just kind of put it into that mode if I like into E drive mode so now I'm literally just purely running on electric and it's enough for you and he's pretty pokey to be honest up to the national speed limit it's got a bit of regenerative braking not nearly as as much as the Tesla it's got a nice pull away out of the corner you know this is a this is a nice sporty feel and I'm running purely on electric power let's go alert authorities got some nice handling too so when you accelerate away you know I can feel it it's kind of not really fully there you know that it's got so much more power once they mi see kicks in but and on full electric is actually pretty sprightly and I can imagine driving around cities and towns and you know that would be that would be a mode that would be really really usable and you know very very practical the interior is as futuristic the exterior and this protonic frozen black special edition for me is the perfect SPECT large sills make entry and exit tricky and it's safe to say the boot space rules this out as being a family car certainly inside on the dashboard there's a lot of familiar BMW DNA but there's a lot of things that aren't so familiar so what I really really like I'm not going to talk so much about the sort of you know the the tech here I've got the normal sort of BMW idrive system and that's straight our BMW the interesting thing for me is that the way this car drives and the different driving modes so at the moment I'm in full automatic I am actually in combined electric if you like hybrid mode so the internal combustion engines kicking in or giving me assistance whenever I need to to make progress in the way that I want to but what I also have is the ability to drive this car on the paddles and I've also got a sport mode so I'm going to put it into sport mode at the next possible opportunity and to see how dramatic that is because I've a feeling it might be quite dramatic all right here we go into sport mode and that's more like it all right sale taste ooh like I don't know there's a bit of artificial jiggery-pokery going on there but I don't care it's a fairly firm ride affirm the sporty ride there is a comfort mode setting so if I put the comfort mode setting on and just chill out it turns into a kind of more of a cruiser type car these seats are really comfortable they look really cool I do have to make a comment about the rear seats I think they're there as a token gesture more than anything I'm not too sure that there's a huge amount of headroom or legroom for somebody but it's a it's more of a 2+2 I think and there certainly when you put it into that sport mode you put your foot on the loud pedal or electric pedal or however you call it in an i8 it certainly has a turn of speed on it and when you lift off the gas you've got this lovely whistle going on if it's makes you sound like you in some kind of spaceship you gather speed very quickly sadly there are such things as speed limits in the UK and I have to adhere to them but I can imagine that actually if you drove this car if you're not really really careful then the boys in blue are gonna take a big interest in you very very quickly because it's a very very fast carpet but in it it's got a great feel to it it really really has so while I'm driving this car I've got a stop or at least try and compare it to the all-electric cars that I've driven because you know it's the kind of middle ground between full internal combustion engine and full electric is performance hybrid and it's really interesting in the fuel economy figures for this I guess it really depends on what type of mode you driving in and how you drive it but but they are huge and certainly if you are just doing some gentle around town driving you're gonna be running on full electric and not using any any petrol at all so economy wise it takes lots and lots of boxes performance wise it ticks those boxes too and I just think it looks when you stop it whistles you're not gonna get bored of that are you you're certainly not gonna get bored of that noise as I said it's got a pretty firm suspension setup but I've taken it down this road on purpose it's a pretty narrow country Lane it's got pretty rough tarmac and it's dealing with it really really well there's no rattles in here that said that seat very comfortable and supportive it's an impressive car this and it's got some urgency as well it really does pull it just pulls and pulls and the nice thing as well it's got four-wheel drive even though the drive is coming from different power formats you know petrol at the back electric at the front they work in unison together really really nicely so you know you want me to naught to 60 test in an i8 three two one go CC this load to get away but once he was going it was pretty rapid so what are my final impressions of this car well it's a car of waiting to drive a very very long time they've been around a while now I ain't and I still think they look like they should be from 2020 they're they're so futuristic from the outside and you know I've not been in the car alarm and it draws a crowd everywhere you stop someone wants to have a look the going doors are they look brilliant however they are a little bit tricky to get in and out of just watch me try and get in and out of it it's harder than it looks see so there is a technique to getting in and out an i8 and looking elegant so heaven forbid if you're a lady and you're wearing a skirt that would be really really difficult I'm sure but it is a cracking piece of technology this car it drives beautifully the performances is really really impressive both in full evie mode and you're in the kind of e drive mode it's actually a really really sprightly little car perfect for round town but then you put it into the full sport mode and you get the benefit of the internal combustion engine working with the electric drive and it's a real corker so yeah very very impressed man maybe maybe this hybrid thing isn't so bad I know I've given it a bit of stick on my channel recently but having driven a fully V Tesla Model X recently and then now the i8 yeah it's an they're very very impressive so huge thanks again to BMW UK for giving me access to this car again this was arranged through the great TV the collective so you know massive thanks for them and again as I said stay tuned to the channel because we've got some brilliant stuff planned with those guys coming up very soon and certainly into next year we've got some amazed so yeah a huge thanks to those guys but I hope you've enjoyed the video as much as I think you're driving this car because it's brilliant and if you have done so give me a thumbs up comment below are always welcome and if you haven't done so already please subscribe to petrol ped for plenty more content to come and I will see you on the next film guys you take care drive safehey guys and welcome to petrol ped see you join me behind the wheel of a BMW i8 and I'm still in the carpark because I basically wanted to do the whole starte thing with you it's just like when I drove the Tesla Model X and like the other week and basically there's no noise at all the car is on I just need to put it into drive mode take my foot off the brake and away we go in full electric so I have read so much about the BMW i8 and really this is the world's first hybrid supercar you think about when it first landed you know the only hybrid you're gonna get was a Toyota Prius so let's go out for a bit of a drive I've got I don't really know what to expect it's got biblical performance it's it's got this really lovely mix of turbocharged one and a half litre petrol engine powering the rear wheels electric engine or electric motor powering the front wheels I think this is going to be really good the production version of the i8 was launched in 2013 yet even today it looks like a car from the future beautiful sculpting around the rear lights lead the eye down flanks and those golden doors are just oh yes I'm liking that now there is a little bit of artificial noise generation going on in this car but that's all good by me because it's going in my ears and it sounds great and it really does sound great so I've got a relatively sure Drive today in this car and there's so much to talk about so much technology in here certainly this mix of this hybrid power unit I think we could probably talk about that all day long but let's kind of put it through its paces and just just have a see how it feels to drive I mean it looks awesome this car I mean I have to say this particular spec it looks more like something out of Batman's cave than a BMW dealership I just think it looks wicked the 1.5 liter turbo petrol engine produces 228 brake horsepower with an additional 139 bhp coming from the electric motor naught to 60 is dispatched in 4.4 seconds and the top speed is electronically limited to 155 miles an hour all-electric range is 23 miles electric electric so you're just poking through at 30 mile an hour village you're on full electric there's no internal combustion engine going on at all here and it is it's just evey quiet and you've got quite a substantial range just running on the electric if you wanted to in fact I've got a button on here I can just kind of put it into that mode if I like into E drive mode so now I'm literally just purely running on electric and it's enough for you and he's pretty pokey to be honest up to the national speed limit it's got a bit of regenerative braking not nearly as as much as the Tesla it's got a nice pull away out of the corner you know this is a this is a nice sporty feel and I'm running purely on electric power let's go alert authorities got some nice handling too so when you accelerate away you know I can feel it it's kind of not really fully there you know that it's got so much more power once they mi see kicks in but and on full electric is actually pretty sprightly and I can imagine driving around cities and towns and you know that would be that would be a mode that would be really really usable and you know very very practical the interior is as futuristic the exterior and this protonic frozen black special edition for me is the perfect SPECT large sills make entry and exit tricky and it's safe to say the boot space rules this out as being a family car certainly inside on the dashboard there's a lot of familiar BMW DNA but there's a lot of things that aren't so familiar so what I really really like I'm not going to talk so much about the sort of you know the the tech here I've got the normal sort of BMW idrive system and that's straight our BMW the interesting thing for me is that the way this car drives and the different driving modes so at the moment I'm in full automatic I am actually in combined electric if you like hybrid mode so the internal combustion engines kicking in or giving me assistance whenever I need to to make progress in the way that I want to but what I also have is the ability to drive this car on the paddles and I've also got a sport mode so I'm going to put it into sport mode at the next possible opportunity and to see how dramatic that is because I've a feeling it might be quite dramatic all right here we go into sport mode and that's more like it all right sale taste ooh like I don't know there's a bit of artificial jiggery-pokery going on there but I don't care it's a fairly firm ride affirm the sporty ride there is a comfort mode setting so if I put the comfort mode setting on and just chill out it turns into a kind of more of a cruiser type car these seats are really comfortable they look really cool I do have to make a comment about the rear seats I think they're there as a token gesture more than anything I'm not too sure that there's a huge amount of headroom or legroom for somebody but it's a it's more of a 2+2 I think and there certainly when you put it into that sport mode you put your foot on the loud pedal or electric pedal or however you call it in an i8 it certainly has a turn of speed on it and when you lift off the gas you've got this lovely whistle going on if it's makes you sound like you in some kind of spaceship you gather speed very quickly sadly there are such things as speed limits in the UK and I have to adhere to them but I can imagine that actually if you drove this car if you're not really really careful then the boys in blue are gonna take a big interest in you very very quickly because it's a very very fast carpet but in it it's got a great feel to it it really really has so while I'm driving this car I've got a stop or at least try and compare it to the all-electric cars that I've driven because you know it's the kind of middle ground between full internal combustion engine and full electric is performance hybrid and it's really interesting in the fuel economy figures for this I guess it really depends on what type of mode you driving in and how you drive it but but they are huge and certainly if you are just doing some gentle around town driving you're gonna be running on full electric and not using any any petrol at all so economy wise it takes lots and lots of boxes performance wise it ticks those boxes too and I just think it looks when you stop it whistles you're not gonna get bored of that are you you're certainly not gonna get bored of that noise as I said it's got a pretty firm suspension setup but I've taken it down this road on purpose it's a pretty narrow country Lane it's got pretty rough tarmac and it's dealing with it really really well there's no rattles in here that said that seat very comfortable and supportive it's an impressive car this and it's got some urgency as well it really does pull it just pulls and pulls and the nice thing as well it's got four-wheel drive even though the drive is coming from different power formats you know petrol at the back electric at the front they work in unison together really really nicely so you know you want me to naught to 60 test in an i8 three two one go CC this load to get away but once he was going it was pretty rapid so what are my final impressions of this car well it's a car of waiting to drive a very very long time they've been around a while now I ain't and I still think they look like they should be from 2020 they're they're so futuristic from the outside and you know I've not been in the car alarm and it draws a crowd everywhere you stop someone wants to have a look the going doors are they look brilliant however they are a little bit tricky to get in and out of just watch me try and get in and out of it it's harder than it looks see so there is a technique to getting in and out an i8 and looking elegant so heaven forbid if you're a lady and you're wearing a skirt that would be really really difficult I'm sure but it is a cracking piece of technology this car it drives beautifully the performances is really really impressive both in full evie mode and you're in the kind of e drive mode it's actually a really really sprightly little car perfect for round town but then you put it into the full sport mode and you get the benefit of the internal combustion engine working with the electric drive and it's a real corker so yeah very very impressed man maybe maybe this hybrid thing isn't so bad I know I've given it a bit of stick on my channel recently but having driven a fully V Tesla Model X recently and then now the i8 yeah it's an they're very very impressive so huge thanks again to BMW UK for giving me access to this car again this was arranged through the great TV the collective so you know massive thanks for them and again as I said stay tuned to the channel because we've got some brilliant stuff planned with those guys coming up very soon and certainly into next year we've got some amazed so yeah a huge thanks to those guys but I hope you've enjoyed the video as much as I think you're driving this car because it's brilliant and if you have done so give me a thumbs up comment below are always welcome and if you haven't done so already please subscribe to petrol ped for plenty more content to come and I will see you on the next film guys you take care drive safe\n"