BMW's Megacity Moves
New EV Due In 2013
BMW has announced its Megacity Vehicle will be released in 2013. Designed for use in the world's biggest metro areas, the Megacity is an electrically driven vehicle lightened by a lot of carbon fiber in place of steel. The launch date announcement shows how serious the Munich automaker is now taking electric vehicles -- previously BMW had only said the Megacity would be out before 2015.
There will be three vehicles in the Megacity Vehicle family, bundled together under the Project i moniker: a two-wheeler, a three-wheeler, which steers by leaning like a BMW's super-exotic Street Carver skateboard, and the model-year-2014 four-wheeler the firm is now beginning to discuss.
BMW's design director Adrian van Hooydonk told Motor Trend that designing the Megacity Vehicle has been a challenge. "It had to be ultra-light and ultra-low drag because that really affects range. And it must communicate its abilities through its style." He says many of the design cues of the low-slung Vision EfficientDynamics concept car will appear on the Megacity Vehicle.
The electric drivetrain will be closely related to the system BMW announced at the 2010 Detroit auto show for its experimental fleet of electric-drive 1 Series, called the Concept ActiveE. "We will test the preseries version of the Megacity Vehicle's electric powertrain in the Concept ActiveE," said BMW engineering chief Klaus Draeger.
This has a specially developed 170-horsepower motor with a wide torque band, driving the rear wheels and a new lithium-ion battery that BMW claims has a range largely unaffected by the ambient temperature thanks to liquid thermal control. The battery pack is modular, so different sizes can be used for different members of the Project i family.
BMW has announced partnership to make the fibers with the carbon fiber company SGL Group, including building a plant in Moses Lake, Washington, which will employ 80 people. BMW will assemble the car in Leipzig, Germany. The company claims this will be the first application of carbon fiber in a high-volume vehicle.
BMW officially will provide cars for the London Olympics in 2012 and will use the ActiveE prototypes to transport athletes and officials. Motor Trend has repeatedly asked senior BMW figures whether this will be the occasion to launch a Megacity concept. Each time, we've been answered with a silent smile and no denial.
The concept will be sold as "a sub-brand of BMW" -- not "of the BMW Group," so it will be less separate than Mini or Rolls-Royce. It could be a modern day BMW Isetta (which is, after all, how the Isetta was sold in the late '50s), though it would be difficult to incorporate design cues from the Concept ActiveE into a modern Isetta. This indicates that more than one design proposal exists, and that BMW may ultimately offer the sub-brand with more than one four-wheel body style.
