Futuristic Transportation (2014.157)

This week, I received an email from a close friend. There would, he said, be a BMW i8 on display at Eastern BMW. One of only a handful in the country, if I wanted to come and see it, and shoot it, I'd be more than welcome.

So, I loaded myself, a camera, and Jonathan, into the car, and went across.

Unfortunately, I couldn't drive it, but as you can see, access was pretty good.

The i8, and the i3 (city car) have been styled to be "interesting", but what's really striking is how resolved they are as vehicles. Sit in an i8, and it's remarkably BMW-like. I drove an i3 a couple of weeks ago, and although it was very definitely different inside, it functioned entirely as a normal car.

This i8 is fast. Sub 5 seconds to 60mph, and 155mph flat out. But it does one hundred and thirty miles on a gallon of petrol. BMW has spent an astronomical amount of money on building ultra-efficient cars.

I think that there's an element of "horseless carriages" to hybrid cars. They're definitely the future, and soon we'll stop thinking of them as "hybrid", and start thinking of them just as cars.

So, whether you'd buy THIS BMW isn't really relevant. The fact is that soon, all cars will combine hydrocarbon and lithium ion propulsion, and we'll go back to cars of the Noughties and wonder why the engine keeps running at the traffic lights.