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Michael Taylor29 Nov 2014
NEWS

BMW's "Thing" a handy hybrid

High-tech 500kW Tesla-hunting BMW 5 Series GT breaks cover

Tesla might think it’s negotiating to trade its battery technology for BMW’s lightweight carbon expertise, but they really should be asking the Germans different questions.

If they did, they’d find BMW is building a Tesla killer, dubbed "The Thing" by its own engineers. You could rightfully consider it to be a worthy M5 equivalent for the 918/LaFerrari/P1 hybrid supercar era, but with far more practicality.

Still so early in its life that it isn’t even an official prototype or program yet, BMW’s Power eDrive creation is dubbed a "longitudinal demonstrator", a 5 Series GT so stuffed with petrol and electric power that it zaps out more than 500kW of power.

It uses next-generation battery technology and electric motors, along with a front-mounted turbocharged 2.0-litre four-cylinder petrol motor to deliver the kind of straight-line performance you'd expect from one of BMW's big biturbo V8 sedans.

It can also deliver more than 100km of pure-electric running, too.

And we’ve been in it, riding shotgun alongside BMW engineers at the top secret Miramas test track in southern France this week.

Off the record, it has been built to prove or disprove the optimistic musings from a handful of engineers, who are convinced there's a fillable hole between now-conventional plug-in hybrids and battery-electric cars.

'The Thing' is envisioned to be a scalable model for BMW's future zero- and low-emission cars.  That's the word from BMW development engineer Friedrich Wilhelm, who says it can dip down as low as 250 horsepower, and all the way up to 650 horsepower.

"It's designed to have the same feeling of performance as a 550i or a 650i, running mostly electric but with a range of more than 600km," he said.

"There are plug-in hybrids and battery-electric cars, but there is a gap in between where we have to get rid of range anxiety and where we can drive for 100km on pure electric power."

And it is furiously fast.
BMW is still exceptionally coy about quoting anything concrete about The Thing, but its straight-line sprint to 100km/h definitely feels like it's in the low four-second bracket.

After plenty of cajoling, Mr Wilhelm conceded that The Thing was all-wheel drive, with a new-generation 200kW electric motor driving the rear wheels, a new-generation 150kW electric motor driving the front wheels and a 170kW TwinPower four-cylinder petrol unit that chimes in when needed.

Together, they deliver phenomenal performance, always tuned to feel rear-drive in character to keep to its BMW DNA.

It delivers, according to development engineer Franz Dreschler-Kaden, more than 20kW/h of electrical energy storage in an era when plug-in hybrids struggle to top 10kW/h. What’s more, The Thing does it with a battery pack that's the same size as the current crop.

"The overall efficiency of a plug-in hybrid is closely related to its all-electric driving range," Mr Dreschler-Kaden said.

"Our ongoing development is geared to maximising the time a car spends in its all-electric mode, which is why we are developing a new generation of highly electrified hybrid vehicles.

"In the plug-in hybrid of the future, the Power eDrive electric drive system will contribute approximately two-thirds of the vehicle's combined running output."

From our brief spell in the passenger seat, the Power eDrive doesn't lose a lot in pure-electric mode. With both of its electric motors running in concert, it's making 350kW of power, so it's not going to be slow.

It rips away onto the Miramas test track with an alacrity that's frankly astounding. Barely any of the 5 Series GT models could touch it off the line, thanks to its combination of all-wheel drive and instant torque. Even in a car this heavy, The Thing can get wheelspin from all four wheels on dry tarmac.

The torque is instant, but BMW is very reticent on quoting a number.

The 170kW four-cylinder, though, has 400Nm, and BMW pulls 250Nm from its 125kW motor in the i3, so we wouldn’t be surprised if the Power eDrive has more than 700Nm from its electric motors alone.

It sure feels that way.

It punches M5-hard from a standing start, then it keeps punching as its gear whine rises with speed. There is no lag, no delay. It's a flier, even with a pre-prototype as lardy as this one.

And then you can make the petrol engine chip its power and torque into the equation and a fast car gets considerably faster.

It also sounds considerably faster, partly because the noise introduced by the ICE motor feels more natural in fast cars, where noise is an important contributor to the driver's at-the-limit understanding of what's going on and how to adjust it.

But The Thing is never tested in corners. We roll off the power and onto the regenerative brakes whenever corners loom, letting the big liftback roll through gently before being attacked again on the next straight.

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Written byMichael Taylor
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