Update on the BMW Megacity

With the eyes of the world pinned to the battle which is about to ensue between GM's Volt and Nissan's Leaf on the electric vehicle market, we nearly forgot of what promises to be one of Europe's biggest hits in the segment of compact, city cars with electric drive: the BMW Megacity.

The highly anticipated result of years of hard work will meet the roads, for the first time, in 2013, as most of you already know. Most of the details surrounding the car, however, have been kept under a tight lid until now.

For some reason, as the year slowly draws to an end, BMW made public a few more pieces of information regarding the model, the first embodiment of the concepts developed by the carmaker's Project i.

The car will be built, according to WhatCar?, on a platform BMW likes to call Life-Drive concept: an aluminum chassis which holds the batteries, electric motor and management system and on top of which BMW will throw the carbon fiber body.

The model will be similar in size with Volkswagen's Golf, a bit bigger than most of the industry expected it to be. The electric motor will be located at the rear, with the rear wheels being the ones who do all the pushing.

The Megacity vehicle will be built at the BMW Leipzig plant, as a BMW sub-brand and not a BMW or a MINI. The car's electric powertrain was already previewed in the ActiveE as a new synchronous electric motor (it's not clear, however, whether this is the actual system which will go into the Megacity)

On the ActiveE, the system develops 170 bhp and a maximum torque of 250 Nm from a standstill. It is capable of traveling with a top speed of 90 mph (144 km/h) and has a range of 124 miles (200 km).