I can remember exactly where I was when I first saw a BMW i8 on the road. It was Silver Metallic with Frozen Blue accents and was silently gliding along Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. That unique looking car fits in so well into its City of Dreams surroundings. Fast-forward two years and our 2017 Protonic Red Edition BMW i8 isn’t any less futuristic looking, judging by the responses we received from everyone who came in contact with it. And the response from onlookers was very positive and surprisingly knowledgeable. Most knew that it was a plug-in-hybrid and seemed to like everything that they saw and heard about it as we filled them in on some of the unique features of this car.
Base Price and Options
The color of our tester is very unique, so much so that there will only be 100 Protonic Red Edition i8’s in the United States and 15 in Canada, plus an additional limited number of units worldwide. It is, after all, an $11,000 premium over the base i8 which starts at $140,700. The Protonic Red Edition, which starts at $151,700, includes a leather engine cover, display key, anthracite roofliner, LED headlights and Protonic Red Edition contents. Our car was also fitted with the optional $6,300 Laserlight headlights and when you add $995 for destination and handling, you end up with a price of $158,995 excluding taxes, tags, registration, dealer fees, etc. One more reason this will remain a very rare car. Reeves BMW Tampa is one of the few dealers in the United States that has been allocated one of these cars. Reeves BMW Tampa is part of Reeves Import Motorcars which is a family owned and operated business, and have been around since 1971.
Yes, that’s a lot of money, but a mid-engine Ferrari or Lamborghini will set you back a quarter of a million dollars, plus options and taxes. And if you want an exotic hybrid, the Porsche 918 Spyder costs more than $850,000 and a hybrid Ferrari LaFerrari costs more than $1.4 million. There is no question that Ferrari, Lamborghini and Porsche are much more aggressive, extreme ultra-high performance cars, but for the select few people who can afford these cars, the BMW i8 represents a lot of style, performance and technology with a starting price of $140,700.
Would I rather have a BMW M2 Coupe (which starts at $51,700) and a BMW M4 Coupe (which starts at $66,200) and more than $20,000 in my checking account for track days and new tires, absolutely! But the BMW i8 is intended for a much different buyer, quite possibly someone who is moving up from an M car as they climb the corporate ladder and the kids move out and they can focus more on transportation for themselves.
Technology and Plug-In-Hybrid Drivetrain
The BMW i8 has two motors powering the 4 wheels; a 129-hp electric motor which drives the front axle and a 1.5-litre TwinPower turbocharged inline 3-cylinder gasoline powered 228-hp engine which drives the rear axle. When the batteries are fully charged, the i8 is a front-wheel-drive all electric car. When you push the gear shifter to the left (once in Drive) you engage Sport mode, the rear engine fires up and you have a 357-hp, 420 lb-ft of torque, 4-wheel drive electric and gasoline powered car which can sprint from 0-60 mph in just 4.2 seconds.
The car can be charged one of three ways: using a DC Combo
Charger which takes about 30 minutes; using the BMW i charging station which takes about 2.5 hours (these can be installed at your home); or if you just have access to a standard wall plug, you can use the portable charger which takes about 8 hours, useful if you are not at home and you want to charge your car overnight.
With a full charge you have a range of 15 miles and can drive up to 75 mph. But there is no need for range anxiety with the i8. As long as you have gas in your tank, the 3-cylinder engine is always there to seamlessly transition from electric-only, to gas and electric, or gas only and has a range of up to 300 miles.
Design and Style
One of the show stoppers of this car, which is an integral design component of its overall futuristic look, are the scissor doors. Easy to open and close, it’s the steps in-between that require practice and fine-tuning. You need to look good doing this because you are always being watched by onlookers as this car attracts attention wherever it goes. To get in, you slide your rear-end in first, then bring both feet across the very wide door sill and place them in the footwell. To get out, it’s left leg first, lean on your left arm on the door sill, then right leg, then roll out, kind of. Once you get the hang of it, you can try to look as cool as the car you are driving. And should you ever need it, this is a 2+2 which has room for two small passengers in the rear seats. I drove with three occupants including my two nieces who had (almost) no problem climbing in and out of the front and rear seats. Lots of Snapchatting emanated from both of their seats during our drive.
Conceptually the car is divided in two, with the upper part being what BMW refers to as the Life Module, or passenger compartment, which is made of high strength Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic (CFRP). The lower portion of the car is referred to as the Drive Module, which contains all of the running gear and is made of aluminum. The i8 weighs 3,455 lbs. and is built using sustainable materials and green build techniques.
Fuel Economy
With a fuel economy rating of 28 mpg city/highway and gasoline+electric combined driving of 76 MPGe, this is quite a fuel-efficient exotic car. By comparison, the Lamborghini Huracán rating is 14 mpg city/20 mpg highway and the Ferrari 488 rating is 16 mpg city/22 mpg highway. Yes, the Lamborghini and Ferrari are much more extreme and higher performance supercars but the BMW’s exotic looks and performance are not reflected in exotic fuel economy – quite the contrary.
Nitpicks
My two nitpicks; the driver and passenger windows do not go all the way down. In the fully opened position, there is more than an inch of window sticking up. Driving with the windows opened and your elbow out isn’t really an option because your elbow rests on top of the glass, which is not very comfortable. The car door isn’t large enough to conceal the entire window.
Other nitpick, no AM radio. FM and satellite radio are available, as is the ability to connect an iPod and other MP3 players but AM is not available. Living in a large urban area with the desire to tune into news, traffic reports and sports channels is pretty common. Some AM stations are now available on HD radios, when you switch to the 2nd and 3rd HD channels.
Overall Driving Impressions
The BMW i8 is a surprisingly normal car to drive. You know you are getting into an exotic car as you walk towards it but once successfully inside, everything about this car is relatively simple, easy and quite intuitive to use. With a little bit of agility, this could easily be used as a daily driver, especially because of its all-wheel-drive capability. If you don’t want to fuss with the car at all, just put it in drive and off you go. The car takes care of determining if you are in electric, gas plus electric or gas only mode if you have run out of battery charge. If you feel like participating in the driving experience, you can move the shifter to the left, engage sport mode and start paddling your way up and down through the 6-speed transmission. And with this car’s surprisingly boisterous sounding gasoline engine, the exhaust note is very rewarding as you generate very sporty sounding upshifts and downshifts.
A 15 mile battery range does not sound like a lot. If you have a short commute to work and back and or access to a charging station at work, then you could achieve an electric-only daily commute. But it seems like a lot of technology involved in this car for a relatively limited amount of return on that tech investment. But one thing is for sure, you can feel less guilty about driving an exotic car knowing that in hybrid mode, you aren’t burning fossil fuels or emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
