BMW i8 Review by Autocar

Here’s an excerpt of the BMW i8 Review by Autocar:

It should be like a Porsche 918 Spyder for a fifth of the outlay. It’s certainly got some promising ingredients.

The 1.5-litre three-cylinder Mini Cooper engine cradled between the i8’s back wheels has a higher specific output than any production combustion engine that BMW currently makes, feeding 228bhp and 236lb ft to the rear wheels of the car via a 6-speed ZF automatic transmission. Between the front wheels there’s a 128bhp, 184lb ft ‘hybrid synchronous’ electric motor, driving those front wheels through a two-speed automatic transmission.

And here’s the clever bit. That electric motor and transmission, the 7.1kWh lithium ion battery mounted where the car’s transmission tunnel might otherwise be and the high-voltage power management system add almost exactly 200kg to the i8. Relative to an aluminium or steel equivalent, says BMW, the carbonfibre-reinforced plastic monocoque saves exactly 200kg. So the car weighs in at 1540kg with fluids onboard: which is less than a current Porsche 911 Turbo, never mind the 918.

The i8’s two-speed gearbox, meanwhile, allows the electric motor to operate at peak torque as the combustion engine passes its torque peak in the lower intermediate gears. And that means, as well as 357bhp, you really do get 420lb ft of mid-range thrust from this car at times. And it feels like it.

Early impressions of the i8 are of nothing less than a fully-fledged supercar. The body looks ridiculously low, wide and ground-hugging. The styling’s got smack-in-the-chops impact to rival a Lamborghini, and scissor doors for belt-and-braces extravagant effect.

You have to fold yourself into the cabin between a low roofline and a high, wide, expensive-looking sill. And once you have, the interior’s got no less of a sense of occasion to it, with a generously sculptural, driver-focused dashboard, colourful LCD instruments, low-slung and deep-dished sports seats; there’s also an abundance of little features and touches that lift the ambience way above BMW’s usual conservative norm.

So it talks the talk, the i8 – loud and clear. Walking the walk of something as pure as a Porsche 911 was always going to be the harder bit. On handling precision and that final sliver of driver engagement, the BMW falls short of brilliance. But it’s good, and almost there. Certainly good enough to consider the car an amazing success in its own hyper-specialised niche.

Right up until you go looking for that critical last fraction of driver appeal, in fact, the i8 does almost everything right. Starting off with ‘Comfort’ mode selected on its adaptive dampers and near-silent drive turning its front wheels, the i8 is comfortable and super-civilised around town. It’s a bit choppy-riding occasionally, but not often.

Its steering is light but there’s a modicum of well-judged feedback, and performance is entirely decent in electric mode. Electric-only range is a bit low, in reality about 15 miles. But the BMW seldom operates like a range-extended EV unless you explicitly instruct it to anyway, its combustion engine regularly chiming in through most drive modes even when the battery is relatively well-charged.

Knock the gear selector into ‘Sport’ mode and the engine begins to run almost continually. Gun the accelerator away from a standstill and the powertrain feels like a big V6: instant and heavy-hitting on pedal response, but with a loud, gruff, synthesized soundtrack broadcast to you over the audio speakers.