ohtourist.com: BMW ActiveHybrid 3: turbo-ed six pot does 6.4L/100km

Sunday, October 16, 2011

BMW ActiveHybrid 3: turbo-ed six pot does 6.4L/100km

BMW’s reveal of the new F30 BMW 3-Series comprises of a total of 5 different cars – the Sport Line, the Modern Line, the Luxury Line, the traditional M Sport package and the car you see here – the BMW ActiveHybrid 3. It’s basically a 335i with an electric motor integrated into the 8-speed automatic.

Maximum combined output is 340 horsepower and 450Nm of torque, with 306hp coming from the engine and about 54hp from the electric motor. The car can run on electric power only for between 3km to 4km on a full charge of the battery in the boot. Top speed in electric only mode is about 60km/h under load, and up to almost 160km/h during coasting.

I was hoping to see a more reasonably sized engine paired with an electric motor since BMW has the new four cylinder turbo N20 engines to play with, but BMW continues with the philosophy of focusing on high fuel efficiency with their EfficientDynamics turbo diesel models and keeping the ActiveHybrid cars as more of a greener performance car kinda thing. The ActiveHybrid 3 ended up being a smaller ActiveHybrid 5, or you can consider it a 335i with a KERS system, depending on how you want to look at things.

Average fuel consumption for the BMW ActiveHybrid 3 is expected to be less than 6.4 liters per 100km on the EU test cycle, which BMW says is a savings of 12.5 percent compared to other BMW models of a similar performance level. As a comparison, the 320d EfficientDynamics is rated at just 4.1 liters per 100km on the EU driving cycle.