BMW i8 Review, Auto Express
BMW i8 review
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The BMW i8 truly does redefine what a supercar can be. With looks that are the stuff of a bedroom poster, including ground-hugging proportions and ‘butterfly’ doors, it’s BMW’s most striking car ever. The spectacle is brutal too, with a Four.4-second 0-62mph sprint, while the treating us up there with the very best sports cars.
But here’s the thing: its official average fuel consumption rating is 134.5mpg, and CO2 is 49g/km. Those near-miraculous numbers come because the i8 is a petrol-electric hybrid, and the culmination of all BMW’s engineering knowhow. It’s not the flawless supercar by any means, but it’s more stunning and more futuristic than anything else close to its price.
BMW i8 vs BMW M1: movie
The BMW i8 is a real departure from what you think you know about the supercar market. This is a car with tempo to rival the best sports cars, and marks an achievement of true innovation in terms of design, spectacle, and efficiency. In years to come, we may end up looking back on the i8 as the supercar that saved the supercar from extinction.
Tho’ it sits alongside the clever little i3 in BMW’s eco-friendly ‘i’ range, the i8 is a different suggesting altogether. It mates a daring, rakish design and head-turning looks with an advanced plug-in hybrid powertrain. This all sits on a chassis made from carbon-fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) which BMW developed at good expense specifically for its electrified cars.
In some ways the powertrain isn’t indeed original – slew of other hybrids mate petrol and electrified motors to achieve good fuel efficiency – but it’s the way they’re combined in the i8 that’s mesmerising. It places a 1.5-litre three-cylinder turbo engine – also found in the MINI Cooper – behind the driver, and links it to an electrified motor at the front.
Nothing too sci-fi there, but the combination of a 228bhp MINI engine driving the rear wheels and a 139bhp electrified motor driving the fronts gives the i8 stunning, instant acceleration and four-wheel drive traction.
It boasts a total of 357bhp and 570Nm of torque and, as a result, the BMW i8 will blast from 0-62mph in just Four.Four seconds and onto a top speed of 155mph. It’s not fairly Ferrari four hundred eighty eight GTB territory, but it’ll give most Porsche 911s a fright, and runs the Audi R8 close.
That puts the BMW i8’s £100,000 price point into perspective. In fact, combined with its zero-VED status and 134.5mpg fuel efficiency rating, it looks a relative bargain.
Is it ideal? No. The reality is that you can’t have that much technology working away in a sports car and make the driving practice feel truly ‘natural’ (a fake engine noise is piped into the cabin through the speakers, for example) but it does a very good job of attempting. It’s also not as economical in real life as it is on paper, not by any means.
But still, no other sports car of this type and price can come close to its efficiency, or its sense of futuristic occasion, and that makes the i8 truly special.
Engines, spectacle and drive
A sports car with a three-cylinder engine doesn’t sound like the most thrilling prospect in the world, but thanks to the assistance of an electrical motor, the i8 feels every bit as quick as an Audi R8.
Officially, 0-62mph takes Four.Four seconds, but because you have the instant torque of the electrical motor, it actually feels a lot quicker in the real world. It doesn’t matter what gear you’re in – the i8 comes as standard with a six-speed automatic transmission – the i8 responds instantly to every prod of the throttle.
The i8’s nature as part-supercar, part-eco car means it has different driving modes that affect how the engine and electrical motor interact with each other. So, slot the gearlever to the left into Sport mode you get the petrol engine running all the time, the total output from the electrified motor, firmer settings for the dampers and more aggressive power steering.
Keep it in Convenience or Eco Pro mode, however, and the i8 will attempt and run on electrical power alone, bringing in the petrol engine only when you accelerate aggressively or go above 45mph. The eco-friendly eDrive setting gives you unspoiled electrified running for up to twenty two miles, and raises the maximum speed to 75mph.
Using just the electrified motor, you’ll find acceleration comparable to a hot hatch. Flooring the throttle gives you a sleek and muscular surge of acceleration, accompanied by a sci-fi whine from the electrified motor and a deep, guttural growl from the three-cylinder engine.
Adding to the sensation of speed is the automatic gearbox, which supplies seamless switches to create the illusion of an uninterrupted wave of acceleration.
Guide the i8 through a series of leans and it feels light on its feet, with hardly any bod roll and a crisp response from the fingertip-light steering. Unlike some rivals that feel as if they are pummeling the road into conformity, the BMW is more gentle and measured, requiring only puny inputs from the driver.
Once you’re actually in the corner, you’ll find the i8 isn’t fairly as engaging or as adjustable as a nine hundred eleven or Audi R8, but it’s gravely capable nonetheless.
Thanks to the standard adaptive dampers, rail convenience is pretty good, while the BMW’s aerodynamic styling – it boasts a haul coefficient of just 0.26 – means there’s very little wind noise. However, despite its skinny tyres, the i8 generates fairly a bit of road roar – albeit no worse than in a Porsche 911.
Engines
There’s only one drivetrain to speak of, but as it’s so groundbreaking and so central to the existence of the i8, it’s worth expanding on.
A three-cylinder turbo petrol engine – which, with 228bhp, is boosted to toughly 100bhp more than it has in the MINI Cooper – is located mid-rear, behind the driver. It powers the rear wheels.
The electrified motor, with 139bhp, is in front of the driver and powers the front axle. That gives the i8 all-wheel drive, with the motors able to work together or independently of each other. Clever software ensures that during gentle driving the electrified motor, which draws power from a lithium-ion battery pack, assists the petrol motor in using as little fuel as possible.
On the other mitt, during more aggressive driving the two combine compels fully, with the electrified motor serving up instant torque for a quick getaway then helping the i8 achieve its 357bhp maximum output.
If that output doesn’t sound like much in this context, that’s because it isn’t – the latest Audi R8 develops 533bhp – but the i8 is very light for a hybrid, so it doesn’t need masses of power.
Clever tuning means that the i8 sounds a little like a Porsche flat-six from the inwards, particularly in Sport mode when the electronically enhanced soundtrack – piped into the cabin through the stereo speakers – is turned up to total volume.
MPG, CO2 and running costs
The i8’s official figures of 135mpg and 49g/km are almost unlikely to achieve in the real world, but you’ll undoubtedly improve considerably on what you’d get from a nine hundred eleven or an R8. During our time with the car we returned almost 40mpg – less than a third of its official figure – albeit that included slew of hard driving.
However, as with all plug-in models, the running costs will depend very much on how you use the car. If you use it for a brief daily commute and have access to a charging point, you could save thousands at the pumps by mainly using the battery. And the savings don’t end there.
Company car buyers will benefit greatly. When the i8 was introduced in two thousand fourteen it sat in the 5% BIK band, meaning company car tax could be as low as £998 per year. Sadly (and predictably) it’s now in the 9% band (for 2015/16) and will shift up to 11% for 2016/2016 – but that still significantly undercuts traditional sports car rivals.
It’s imperative that i8 owners manage their battery charges in order to make the most of the drivetrain’s fuel savings. Like all batteries these ones go vapid – and fairly quickly if you’re powerful footed – which means that at times the i8 will be running on its petrol engine alone, and consequently will feel notably slower. Both the engine and regenerative braking can regenerate the battery, but it’s always better to keep the battery topped up by plugging it in.
Plugged into a standard household supply, the i8 takes around eight hours to charge from vapid, however with a special BMW-supplied wall box (£315) an eighty per cent charge can be achieved within two hours. Most BMW dealerships have one or two of these available too, so any i8 proprietor can pop in and top up using their special recharging card. The ever-growing network of public charging stations can prove useful as well, of course.
As a plug-in hybrid, the i8 does without the range anxiety of traditional electrified cars. With its 32-litre fuel tank onboard it can theoretically cover just over three hundred miles on a utter charge and with a total tank.
Insurance groups
As you’d expect, the BMW i8 is in the top category for insurance in the UK – group 50. So, while fuel and tax costs may be in the family hatchback leagues, insuring an i8 is another matter altogether – one for a specialist high-performance car insurer, most likely.
That’s partly to do with its spectacle and desirability to thieves, but also repair costs – the engine may be common, but the CFRP chassis and carbon bod parts are not cheap to repair.
BMW offers bespoke in-house insurance for i8 drivers, but as ever you need to shop around to make sure you’re getting the best deal.
Depreciation
Our experts expect the i8 to retain around fifty five percent of its fresh value after three years. This is a car that will remain desirable for many years to come, and that figure is in keeping with the Audi R8 and comparable higher-end versions of the Porsche 911.
Interior, design and technology
The BMW i8 looks absolutely stunning whichever colour and wheel combination you go for. The narrow LED headlights, elegant forms, spaceship-style rear lights and distinctive flying buttresses all make for a low-slung car with more presence than almost anything else on the road; laser headlights are optional, delivering an even more penetrating and bright rafter pattern than the LEDs do – themselves a fairly latest development in headlights.
As a result, you’ll need to get used to being the centre of attention, because the i8 is a car that attracts a constant stream of camera phone wielding car fans. The colour palette is relatively puny, however, varying from silver to a far more eye-catching electrical blue and black. Some are more eccentric than others owing to brightly coloured accents, but BMW has resisted the urge to suggest garish paint tones.
Whatever you choose, the options list contains exterior detailing such as contrasting coloured trim for the skirts and grille, and there are numerous wheel choices, albeit only in 20-inch size to accommodate the unusually lean bespoke tyres.
Open one of the i8’s jaw-dropping dihedral butterfly doors and you’ll detect an interior that’s every bit as stylish as the exterior. It’s not fairly as futuristic as the smaller i3’s, but the wraparound dashboard is slickly designed and predominated by a pair of 8.8-inch HD screens: the unit in front of the driver displays the speedo, rev-counter and energy use dials, while the centrally-mounted display is for the navigation and infotainment functions.
Better still, quality is top notch, with excellent fit and finish and soft-touch plastics and leather for the dash. As with the smaller i3, recycled and sustainable materials are used via, too. It’s also very well tooled, as you’d expect at this price.
Sat-nav, stereo and infotainment
Despite the futuristic leaning of the dashboard design, the infotainment is lifted directly from the BMW parts shelf, meaning you’re dealing with harshly the same iDrive system that everyone from a MINI through a five Series driver uses. It’s one of the few disappointments of an otherwise sublime cabin – iDrive’s rotary dial control system remains unintuitive.
It does however come with a 20Gb hard drive for loading music onto, and fittingly it’s the latest and most top-end version of the system available (until the two thousand sixteen BMW seven Series arrives, that is), so it includes a host of extra features like real time traffic information and BMW’s Concierge service. A head-up display is standard, but internet functionality costs £95, while a Harman/Kardon stereo upgrade (recommended) costs about ten times that.
