Photo: Chasing Cars
German carmaker BMW is about ready to become a major player in the electric car segment. After years of toying around with the likes of the affordable, fully-electric i3 and the less affordable, plug-in hybrid i8, the Bavarians seem to be fully committed to going down this path.
But what if instead of releasing the first electrified car in our age, BMW would have done it much sooner, say at the beginning of the 1960s? Here’s a rendering as an answer to that.
To be fair to the Germans, BMW kind of came up with an EV, at about that time. It was at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich when it showed something called 1602 Elektro-Antrieb. Based on the 02 Series, the concept was powered by a 43 hp electric motor fitted up front and a 12.6 kWh battery. Two of them were used to move people around and served as support cars in that Olympics' marathon.
Now, imagining a retro-styled, 02 Series-based BMW i8 from the 1960s would probably not have succeeded in sending across a message of high-performance. That is why something that still captures the minds and wallets of modern-day car collectors was chosen: the 507.
These cars have always been extremely rare and now are ultra-expensive (the one owned by its designer, Albrecht von Goertz, went not long ago for $2.7-million), so it’s unlikely BMW would have experimented with one of these. But, since this is a rendering, the sky is the limit; truth be told, we’re kind of happy that’s so.
Penned by the people over at Chasing Cars (and part of a series of renderings that includes a 1960s Tesla Model X), the 507 i8 sure is a looker, one we wouldn’t mind having around today. We're not being told anything about the powertrain, so it could be anyhting, provided it has some degree of electrification to go with it.
To be fair to the Germans, BMW kind of came up with an EV, at about that time. It was at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich when it showed something called 1602 Elektro-Antrieb. Based on the 02 Series, the concept was powered by a 43 hp electric motor fitted up front and a 12.6 kWh battery. Two of them were used to move people around and served as support cars in that Olympics' marathon.
Now, imagining a retro-styled, 02 Series-based BMW i8 from the 1960s would probably not have succeeded in sending across a message of high-performance. That is why something that still captures the minds and wallets of modern-day car collectors was chosen: the 507.
These cars have always been extremely rare and now are ultra-expensive (the one owned by its designer, Albrecht von Goertz, went not long ago for $2.7-million), so it’s unlikely BMW would have experimented with one of these. But, since this is a rendering, the sky is the limit; truth be told, we’re kind of happy that’s so.
Penned by the people over at Chasing Cars (and part of a series of renderings that includes a 1960s Tesla Model X), the 507 i8 sure is a looker, one we wouldn’t mind having around today. We're not being told anything about the powertrain, so it could be anyhting, provided it has some degree of electrification to go with it.
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