The BMW i8: A Revolutionary Driving Experience

When you step into the BMW i8, you're immediately struck by the sense of cocooning that comes with its unique design. The car's displays and information systems are cleverly integrated into the cabin, providing you with a wealth of information about the 1.5-liter 3-cylinder engine and electric motors. But what really sets the i8 apart is its innovative materials and manufacturing process. Unlike traditional cars, which often rely on extensive paintwork, the BMW i8 uses thermoplastic panels that are not only lighter but also use 70% less water in production.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the i8 is its attention to detail and commitment to sustainability. From the carbon-fiber passenger cell to the electric motors, every component is carefully designed to minimize environmental impact. The car's factories, which produce the panels and other components, are powered by hydroelectric or wind energy, making it a model for eco-friendly manufacturing. And when you put the i8 in reverse, something truly remarkable happens: all the sounds from the motor and transmission disappear, replaced by an eerie silence that makes it feel like you're gliding along without any noise at all.

Steering the BMW i8 is a revelation – it's light, direct, and incredibly accurate. The car responds eagerly to your touch, providing a sense of connection with the road that's hard to find in other vehicles. But one of the most surprising aspects of the i8's driving experience is its braking system, which uses regenerative braking to minimize wear on the discs. At first, it can take some getting used to, but soon you'll appreciate the extra precision and control that comes with this advanced technology.

As you push the i8 harder around corners, you'll begin to notice a subtle shift in its behavior – initially, it feels incredibly balanced and planted, like a hot hatch on steroids. But as you increase your speed, the car begins to understeer, which can be a bit disconcerting if you're not expecting it. However, even this can be mitigated with careful handling, and overall the i8's balance and adjustability make it an absolute joy to drive.

One of the most encouraging aspects of the BMW i8 is its rapid progress and development in the automotive world. When the concept EfficientDynamics was revealed, BMW announced a CO2 figure of 99g/km and predicted 70mpg – and yet, when the production model emerged, it exceeded these projections by a significant margin. The i8 produces just 49g/km of CO2 and has more than doubled its mpg figure to an impressive 134 miles per gallon.

For driving enthusiasts, there's something special about experiencing electric power on four wheels. It's not just about raw speed or acceleration – although the i8 is certainly capable in those areas. Rather, it's about the quiet, serene experience of gliding along without any noise pollution, waking anyone up before dawn without disturbing the neighbors. And yet, even as you enjoy this blissful serenity, you're also aware that electric power can bring new and exciting possibilities to performance cars – from advanced all-wheel-drive systems to innovative regenerative braking technologies.

Looking ahead, it's clear that hybrid cars are set to play a major role in the automotive landscape of the future. The upcoming BMW i8 e-tron, Honda NSX, and Porsche 911 hybrid models will likely be hotly anticipated by enthusiasts and driving aficionados alike. While some may worry about the impact these new technologies could have on traditional performance cars, it's clear that they're not a threat – rather, a natural progression in the ongoing evolution of automotive design.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enelectric cars and hybrids and not new things indeed the first car designed by Ferdinand Porsche back in 1898 was electric and utilized hub motors but now more than ever we seem to be living in an age where battery power is playing an increasing role in how our cars are powered just look at the way motorsport is going victory at LeMond this year was Duke jacked between three different hybrid models while f1 is also growing ever more complex and battery reliant formula II will take things on a stage further still then there is the latest trailer of hypercars p1 9 18 and laferrari these perhaps more than anything else have made everyone to Evo look afresh at how electric power can enrich our measuring lives I should also add the torque vectoring SLS AMG electric drive to that list whoa nobody seems to have seen it since its launch but is not just this top mega expensive machine on which has been grabbing our attention and peaking our interest take the Renault Twizy for example it's certainly not the fastest thing on four wheels that's not 230 miles an hour and just over in seconds 50 miles now is the top speed and surprising how long you can actually maintain that for I did it protect some big ones in the Twizy scariest moment of my life pretty much just by being rear-wheel drive you won't be doing lots of big mysterious kids unless you live on a gravel driveway push on and it's well resolutely under steering but still all the fun we had somehow it's pretty stiff it is you can actually feel everything that's going on a road level and it's just something lovely about traveling through the landscape comparing it to a Caterham NASA might be pushing things just a little bit too far but you know what I mean it's sort of the elements and you're driving through them and you can smell the smells and it's just yeah it's called tozi looks and feels like a cross between a moon buggy and a mobility scooter this is a doors are optional but I think they're a must-have not for any notional protection from the elements just for the small thrill it gives you every time you release the catches and they spin skywards like a Diablos you can carry a passenger in Twizy although it's probably not a car in which to pick someone up for a first date they have to sit slightly awkwardly behind you pinned in with a legs splayed because the Twizy is so narrow actually got a lot of road to play with so the game of maintaining momentum as heavy 50 miles an hour she won't come fifty miles an hour's it's not too safe keep pace on a a road dual carriageway that might be step to that but worse the time instead they keep on tapping come on little tizzy come on come on we're not about to suggest a Twizy is soul form of Evo motoring rather it seems to make sense as a second car to something thirsty like an AMG Merc use the big v8 for most journeys but take the Twizy when you just want to pop to the nearest town or village and starting the AMG would just be wasteful we found the twisties range was around 40 to 45 miles which makes decent local trips northern feasible now for some I feel like you want your eco evo motoring to have a little more practicality about it as usability review a better word which case well how do you might just have the answer we are in Austria just outside Vienna and the hills are alive too well the sound of nothing frankly because the happy a3 e-tron is couraging Evy fully electric mode the reformed Aegean to know about with this car the first of these is hybrid auto which is what you use most of the time and includes the sport setting where the 75 kilowatt motor and 148 brake horsepower 1.4 liter TSI engine are utilized together for the greatest performance hybrid hold is then used to conserve battery power while hybrid charge actively harnesses the engine to refill batteries as you're driving the reason for using either of these latter modes is if you say approaching a town and wanted to have as much charge as possible available for Evy driving alternatively you might be heading for the hills and what the battery is full for maximum performance when you reach your favorite stretch of twisting tarmac in full electric mode areas worked extremely hard to keep all the NVH and the noise down so it is incredibly quiet in it I'd say and you don't get very much of that sort of tram like sort of spooling up of the motors you get in some electric cars either anyway as or in some decent rows now let's put it into auto hybrid you might be wondering what lifts the Audi a3 e-tron above something like the much castigated Toyota Prius nivo interest aches and in some ways you'd be right to question however the performance really is of a different magnitude at twice the power 258 pounds for to talk and a naught 60 mile hour time around seven and a half seconds giving you a sort of p1 laugher re connections now you've got to assume that it's going to trickle down more and more to cars that we can actually afford what's a light well the tires are affair limiting factor it's on some pirelli cinturato s which you can hear in the background probably a squealing quite a lot when you lean on them in the corners but very very odd having this instant torque from the battery which augments it and it's possible certainly to get the power on the steer actually cool you can feel the weight though of the battery pack is 125 kilos of batteries back there which really doesn't help turn into the corners I have to say it's quite a curious sensation just having all the tour contact it's a bit like that feeling when manufacturers tuned cars with super sharp throttle response and but all the power right at the top end I've also got this gauge on the left-hand side where normally you'd have a rev counter it's the power meter and it's really here it's quite distracting my peripheral vision it's literally going all the way around to full boost mode and then obviously as you brake hard it flips all the way around the other side down to full charge and it shows how hard the system to work it feels a bit bit muted I have to say sort of kind of it's not a performance car but something certainly intriguing about the way it delivers it are even more importantly we know that this is just the start for a DS e Tron brand Quattro models will arrive in due course as well as an r8 but what about a car it's already here it's got more performance than this so this is where the future gets really interesting this is the BMW i8 the Porsche 911 OD r8 rival and as you can tell the moment we're cruising along in full electric mode to be honest the air-conditioning is making more noise than the car is we can do up to 75 miles an hour and full electric but what gets good is when we put it to sport hybrid with everything on tap from the 96 kilowatt electric motor and the front axle and the 1.5 liter 3-cylinder turbocharged engine behind the seats the i8 puts out a stonking 357 brake horsepower and 420 pounds for the tour sport mode also tightens the damping and reduces the electric power assistance for the steering I've only been driving this car for a few hours but I had to say I absolutely loved it it is really really cool I was quite skeptical coming into it I wasn't sure how exciting it really would be but the power is right up there if they're saying naught 60 and 4.4 seconds and the punch when you get on the throttle it's if you're in the wrong gear then you kind of get an initial surge which the engine then can't keep up with so you can search from the electric which then the motor can't quite so I suppose match but as long as you keep on top of the gears which is nice to have to do anyway far the paddles I suppose it's like always being right and the really good top bit of a rev patent of a normally naturally aspirated engine everywhere we've stopped today people got out of their cars and we take the photographs been asking about it really intrigued by it as well and yes if you get that with other supercars but you wouldn't get it with a 911 probably not even on our rate these days I don't think it looks phenomenal and over and it's got a challenge and everything looks absolutely mind-blowing here but the i8 really is something special it feels really nice to be inside to the cockpit is it's quite fresh I'd say they still got the BMW thing so it's actually tilted or a section here eight degrees towards the driver so you feel nice you sort of cocooned and then you've got the displays up here telling you exactly what's going on with the 1.5 liter 3-cylinder engine and the electric motors I think some of the things that are really cool about this car is when you start looking around it when you open the door which is itself because he doesn't like it my he drawled or you can see the carbon fiber for they call their life cells so the passenger cell is enclosed in carbon-fiber then the engine and the motors are enclosed in element subframes now to produces whole car because the panels are thermoplastic and not painted they actually use seventy percent less water and everything's produced in factories that are powered by hydroelectric or wind power which is just somehow very cool I know this is slightly random we wouldn't normally talk about this but I I had to turn around a lot when we're filming things like this and I love the fact when you put it in reverse all goes silent it just makes it wonderfully easy to maneuver you can imagine doing this in town it's ace one of the biggest things I was worried about with the ia was obviously what it was going to sound like but I think it sounds really good I know some of it is generated so something's coming through in speakers but to be honest when the sounds are this good always don't think it matters what's a nice Drive well steering is very light very light very direct you select with Ferrari steering I suppose but it's very accurate you can really feel what's going on at the road level which is nice there are a few odd traits things like the origins of braking which works very well so you don't feel when it goes from regenitive to mechanical are you using the actual discs but obviously when you lift off the throttle through it's quite a braking effect and that just takes a little bit of getting used to particularly sort of coming into corners where you just perhaps thought you're going to bleed out of the throttle and lose a little bit of speed but not as much as you do when you've obviously got the really jet kicking in what's it like when you start pushing it a bit harder at the corners well initially it feels really nice it does feel like it's got great balance and you sort of tip it in and it feels like it's just going to take perfect sort of almost sort of neutral to oversteer stance but then when you push it harder all it in fact does is understeer which is just a little bit of a shame however most of the time I'd say it feels really nicely balanced and it does feel just so minutely adjustable which is a very cool sometimes with electric cars have been also worried about the extra weight you really don't feel in this I'd say the damping is absolutely brilliant even if you take off and then plant again not something I expected to be doing in an i8 hansung the future flies flying cars that's why they said you'd have in some ways the most encouraging thing about the i8 in the context of this video is the rate of progress and development that it embodies when BMW revealed the vision EfficientDynamics concept which foreshadowed the i8 they announced the co2 figure of 99 g/km and projected 70 mpg Wow we thought gosh yet such is the pace of development this production I ate produces half the co2 putting out just 49 g/km and has more than doubled its mpg figure to 134 miles per gallon it's a remarkable car driving a car on electric power alone is something that we're discovering has its own very real allure not perhaps on a pure performance level yet but just through the blissful serenity that swishing along in near silence can bring I'm not in any way about claim that it can match the joy of yowling Carrera GT or howling Aventador we are beginning to see and understand little things that electric hybrid power can bring to performance cars everything from talk fill to the ability to leave your house entirely silently early in the morning without waking anyone then actually enjoy firing up you're safely and socially out of earshot what will the next round of hybrid cars provide us with well an r8 e-tron the new hybrid Honda NSX and the hybrid Porsche 911 all seem to be on the horizon and on current evidence it feels like they're not things to be feared for potentially killing the performance car rather developments to be welcomed for opening up whole new facets and how we get enjoyable performance on four wheels so if you like this documentary and you want to do more stuff like this take you through the history of well I don't know what else then just from subscribe and tell us in the box belowelectric cars and hybrids and not new things indeed the first car designed by Ferdinand Porsche back in 1898 was electric and utilized hub motors but now more than ever we seem to be living in an age where battery power is playing an increasing role in how our cars are powered just look at the way motorsport is going victory at LeMond this year was Duke jacked between three different hybrid models while f1 is also growing ever more complex and battery reliant formula II will take things on a stage further still then there is the latest trailer of hypercars p1 9 18 and laferrari these perhaps more than anything else have made everyone to Evo look afresh at how electric power can enrich our measuring lives I should also add the torque vectoring SLS AMG electric drive to that list whoa nobody seems to have seen it since its launch but is not just this top mega expensive machine on which has been grabbing our attention and peaking our interest take the Renault Twizy for example it's certainly not the fastest thing on four wheels that's not 230 miles an hour and just over in seconds 50 miles now is the top speed and surprising how long you can actually maintain that for I did it protect some big ones in the Twizy scariest moment of my life pretty much just by being rear-wheel drive you won't be doing lots of big mysterious kids unless you live on a gravel driveway push on and it's well resolutely under steering but still all the fun we had somehow it's pretty stiff it is you can actually feel everything that's going on a road level and it's just something lovely about traveling through the landscape comparing it to a Caterham NASA might be pushing things just a little bit too far but you know what I mean it's sort of the elements and you're driving through them and you can smell the smells and it's just yeah it's called tozi looks and feels like a cross between a moon buggy and a mobility scooter this is a doors are optional but I think they're a must-have not for any notional protection from the elements just for the small thrill it gives you every time you release the catches and they spin skywards like a Diablos you can carry a passenger in Twizy although it's probably not a car in which to pick someone up for a first date they have to sit slightly awkwardly behind you pinned in with a legs splayed because the Twizy is so narrow actually got a lot of road to play with so the game of maintaining momentum as heavy 50 miles an hour she won't come fifty miles an hour's it's not too safe keep pace on a a road dual carriageway that might be step to that but worse the time instead they keep on tapping come on little tizzy come on come on we're not about to suggest a Twizy is soul form of Evo motoring rather it seems to make sense as a second car to something thirsty like an AMG Merc use the big v8 for most journeys but take the Twizy when you just want to pop to the nearest town or village and starting the AMG would just be wasteful we found the twisties range was around 40 to 45 miles which makes decent local trips northern feasible now for some I feel like you want your eco evo motoring to have a little more practicality about it as usability review a better word which case well how do you might just have the answer we are in Austria just outside Vienna and the hills are alive too well the sound of nothing frankly because the happy a3 e-tron is couraging Evy fully electric mode the reformed Aegean to know about with this car the first of these is hybrid auto which is what you use most of the time and includes the sport setting where the 75 kilowatt motor and 148 brake horsepower 1.4 liter TSI engine are utilized together for the greatest performance hybrid hold is then used to conserve battery power while hybrid charge actively harnesses the engine to refill batteries as you're driving the reason for using either of these latter modes is if you say approaching a town and wanted to have as much charge as possible available for Evy driving alternatively you might be heading for the hills and what the battery is full for maximum performance when you reach your favorite stretch of twisting tarmac in full electric mode areas worked extremely hard to keep all the NVH and the noise down so it is incredibly quiet in it I'd say and you don't get very much of that sort of tram like sort of spooling up of the motors you get in some electric cars either anyway as or in some decent rows now let's put it into auto hybrid you might be wondering what lifts the Audi a3 e-tron above something like the much castigated Toyota Prius nivo interest aches and in some ways you'd be right to question however the performance really is of a different magnitude at twice the power 258 pounds for to talk and a naught 60 mile hour time around seven and a half seconds giving you a sort of p1 laugher re connections now you've got to assume that it's going to trickle down more and more to cars that we can actually afford what's a light well the tires are affair limiting factor it's on some pirelli cinturato s which you can hear in the background probably a squealing quite a lot when you lean on them in the corners but very very odd having this instant torque from the battery which augments it and it's possible certainly to get the power on the steer actually cool you can feel the weight though of the battery pack is 125 kilos of batteries back there which really doesn't help turn into the corners I have to say it's quite a curious sensation just having all the tour contact it's a bit like that feeling when manufacturers tuned cars with super sharp throttle response and but all the power right at the top end I've also got this gauge on the left-hand side where normally you'd have a rev counter it's the power meter and it's really here it's quite distracting my peripheral vision it's literally going all the way around to full boost mode and then obviously as you brake hard it flips all the way around the other side down to full charge and it shows how hard the system to work it feels a bit bit muted I have to say sort of kind of it's not a performance car but something certainly intriguing about the way it delivers it are even more importantly we know that this is just the start for a DS e Tron brand Quattro models will arrive in due course as well as an r8 but what about a car it's already here it's got more performance than this so this is where the future gets really interesting this is the BMW i8 the Porsche 911 OD r8 rival and as you can tell the moment we're cruising along in full electric mode to be honest the air-conditioning is making more noise than the car is we can do up to 75 miles an hour and full electric but what gets good is when we put it to sport hybrid with everything on tap from the 96 kilowatt electric motor and the front axle and the 1.5 liter 3-cylinder turbocharged engine behind the seats the i8 puts out a stonking 357 brake horsepower and 420 pounds for the tour sport mode also tightens the damping and reduces the electric power assistance for the steering I've only been driving this car for a few hours but I had to say I absolutely loved it it is really really cool I was quite skeptical coming into it I wasn't sure how exciting it really would be but the power is right up there if they're saying naught 60 and 4.4 seconds and the punch when you get on the throttle it's if you're in the wrong gear then you kind of get an initial surge which the engine then can't keep up with so you can search from the electric which then the motor can't quite so I suppose match but as long as you keep on top of the gears which is nice to have to do anyway far the paddles I suppose it's like always being right and the really good top bit of a rev patent of a normally naturally aspirated engine everywhere we've stopped today people got out of their cars and we take the photographs been asking about it really intrigued by it as well and yes if you get that with other supercars but you wouldn't get it with a 911 probably not even on our rate these days I don't think it looks phenomenal and over and it's got a challenge and everything looks absolutely mind-blowing here but the i8 really is something special it feels really nice to be inside to the cockpit is it's quite fresh I'd say they still got the BMW thing so it's actually tilted or a section here eight degrees towards the driver so you feel nice you sort of cocooned and then you've got the displays up here telling you exactly what's going on with the 1.5 liter 3-cylinder engine and the electric motors I think some of the things that are really cool about this car is when you start looking around it when you open the door which is itself because he doesn't like it my he drawled or you can see the carbon fiber for they call their life cells so the passenger cell is enclosed in carbon-fiber then the engine and the motors are enclosed in element subframes now to produces whole car because the panels are thermoplastic and not painted they actually use seventy percent less water and everything's produced in factories that are powered by hydroelectric or wind power which is just somehow very cool I know this is slightly random we wouldn't normally talk about this but I I had to turn around a lot when we're filming things like this and I love the fact when you put it in reverse all goes silent it just makes it wonderfully easy to maneuver you can imagine doing this in town it's ace one of the biggest things I was worried about with the ia was obviously what it was going to sound like but I think it sounds really good I know some of it is generated so something's coming through in speakers but to be honest when the sounds are this good always don't think it matters what's a nice Drive well steering is very light very light very direct you select with Ferrari steering I suppose but it's very accurate you can really feel what's going on at the road level which is nice there are a few odd traits things like the origins of braking which works very well so you don't feel when it goes from regenitive to mechanical are you using the actual discs but obviously when you lift off the throttle through it's quite a braking effect and that just takes a little bit of getting used to particularly sort of coming into corners where you just perhaps thought you're going to bleed out of the throttle and lose a little bit of speed but not as much as you do when you've obviously got the really jet kicking in what's it like when you start pushing it a bit harder at the corners well initially it feels really nice it does feel like it's got great balance and you sort of tip it in and it feels like it's just going to take perfect sort of almost sort of neutral to oversteer stance but then when you push it harder all it in fact does is understeer which is just a little bit of a shame however most of the time I'd say it feels really nicely balanced and it does feel just so minutely adjustable which is a very cool sometimes with electric cars have been also worried about the extra weight you really don't feel in this I'd say the damping is absolutely brilliant even if you take off and then plant again not something I expected to be doing in an i8 hansung the future flies flying cars that's why they said you'd have in some ways the most encouraging thing about the i8 in the context of this video is the rate of progress and development that it embodies when BMW revealed the vision EfficientDynamics concept which foreshadowed the i8 they announced the co2 figure of 99 g/km and projected 70 mpg Wow we thought gosh yet such is the pace of development this production I ate produces half the co2 putting out just 49 g/km and has more than doubled its mpg figure to 134 miles per gallon it's a remarkable car driving a car on electric power alone is something that we're discovering has its own very real allure not perhaps on a pure performance level yet but just through the blissful serenity that swishing along in near silence can bring I'm not in any way about claim that it can match the joy of yowling Carrera GT or howling Aventador we are beginning to see and understand little things that electric hybrid power can bring to performance cars everything from talk fill to the ability to leave your house entirely silently early in the morning without waking anyone then actually enjoy firing up you're safely and socially out of earshot what will the next round of hybrid cars provide us with well an r8 e-tron the new hybrid Honda NSX and the hybrid Porsche 911 all seem to be on the horizon and on current evidence it feels like they're not things to be feared for potentially killing the performance car rather developments to be welcomed for opening up whole new facets and how we get enjoyable performance on four wheels so if you like this documentary and you want to do more stuff like this take you through the history of well I don't know what else then just from subscribe and tell us in the box below\n"