Preview: BMW 'Project i' city car

Posted Thu Aug 28 2008 8:08 AM by Kenneth Hall

Since the release of its official strategy outline in September last year, media sources around the world have been speculating that BMW is looking at launching a new generation of ultra-efficient city cars. Then in March this year, BMW CEO Norbert Reithofer revealed that the carmaker was planning to establish a new environmental think-tank called 'Project i,' whose task would be to develop a number of solutions for a vehicle designed for congested city motoring.

Project i has been designed to run independently to BMW and has been given until the middle of the next decade to develop a concrete solution for the city car. One of its key managers, Herbert Höltschl, has confirmed that BMW wants to eventually produce a zero-emissions vehicle for global consumption.

Germany’s AutoBild is reporting that BMW will develop a range of zero and low emissions vehicles in the future, and has even produced a rendering of a possible design for one of the new models. While the rendering draws obvious styling cues from the recent M1 Concept, Höltschl has revealed that the cars would look radically different from any past BMWs.

Some of the options BMW is looking at is to use motorbike engines, both petrol and diesel, as well as electric propulsion, with both two wheel pod vehicles and compact four-wheelers currently being considered. Development is still in the planning stages, with the first decision on the drive system to be made by the end of the year. Click here to see the image in full.

Reader Comments

Thu Aug 28 2008 8:52 AM
mlevere1992 says

Interesting design. Why go back to the '50s style white-wall skinny tires? For a city car, that is too much mass for the tires for them to be efficient. Also the way the back end has been tapered, you are losing a lot of storage space in the boot.

I also love that for every new concept that comes out that the people that do these 'renderings' just start taking the front end of that concept and slap it onto every body style that they can imagine. Is this now going to be the look of the 1-series when it gets refreshed instead of the CS concept front end?
Thu Aug 28 2008 9:00 AM
BAUMM III says

It's funny to see how BMW always contradict themselves, already 20 years ago thay said "we will never do Direct injection, no other solution than our tds can blabla"

And recently "there will be no smaller BMW than Serie 1,
Sure, it's what I'm seeing!
Thu Aug 28 2008 9:32 AM
Chris says

baumm, at least its going to be RWD.. you can guarantee yourself that.. and whats wrong with DI? sure there isnt as much throttle response.. but you're getting more efficiency and more power.

in the end this looks like a RWD mini. not bad if you ask me.

but fix the back end. this thing should just look like a squashed 1series.
Thu Aug 28 2008 1:06 PM
Luc says

damn that thing is ugly. why?
Sat Aug 30 2008 2:44 PM
BAUMM III says

I was just joking about BMW, in the '80 they said will never do V8, in the '90 will never do Diesel direct injection and recently will never do a BMW smaller that Serie1 or Cabro Diesel too.
Did they say they will never do FWD?

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