By Miles Downard
There’s an interesting disconnect going on in the world of motoring at the moment. Environmentalists have driven car makers on a search for alternate fuel sources, because petrol and diesel are said to be clogging up the ozone layer and murdering bunnies. The interesting part is how many different ideas are floating about at the moment.
Toyota kicked things off with hybrid technology, combining the power of electricity with traditional petrol combustion to create a ‘best of both world’s solution. It’s arguably neither.
The likes of Tesla has made all-electric look sexy after so many others have failed. Elon Musk’s genius means that battery technology is coming along swifty, meaning that his cars will at least get to the corner without running out of juice (something not many others have managed).
There was a lot of hype around hydrogen power at one stage, which appears to have largely fallen off the map. If memory serves it was Honda leading that race, even going so far as setting up some test pumps at fuel stations in the US. Storage of the stuff is somewhat of an issue though, which together with other complications means the idea is dead in the water at this stage.
Solar power is something that has also been touted about, mainly by research institutions like universities. Major players haven’t given it much, if any attention. Safe to say it’s not viable any time soon.
All this leaves us in a bit of no-man’s land really. But in order to show some level corporate responsibility manufacturer’s continue to plough time and money into what they think is the solution. And so we have this, the 740e iPerformance from BMW. It incorporates the same plugin hybrid technology we’ve seen in the X5 xDrive40e, so there’s an electric motor housed in the gearbox that can be charged via a wall socket or with the 2.0 turbo charged petrol motor.
The combination delivers an impressive 240kW and 500Nm, not that figures like that should matter in a hybrid. Even more irrelevant is a 0-100km/h time of 5.4 seconds, which is again impressive considering the size and weight of the car.
The eDrive button allows one to change how the plug-in hybrid drive system operates. In the AUTO eDRIVE hybrid function, intelligent energy management ensures the combustion engine and electric motor work together with maximum efficiency. The operating strategy defaults to all-electric mode at low and moderate speeds. The combustion engine only joins the fray at a speed of around 80 km/h or under heavy throttle applications.
MAX eDRIVE runs the car exclusively by the electric motor, although the combustion engine can be brought into play at any time by pushing the accelerator into kick down. In this mode the big 7 has a pure-electric top speed of 140 km/h. Range is said to be around 40km/h on a full charge of the battery.
Lastly a Battery Control setting allows the charge of the high-voltage battery to be set manually. The driver can input a target value between 30 and 100 percent of maximum charge.
Also read: BMW 730d: Luxury at its best or technological overload?
The entire system is very refined in its operation, with minimal to no noticeable change on switch over from one mode to another from within the cabin. Driving on pure-electric is also a perfectly acceptable experience especially around town where fuel savings are quite real. I, for example, could comfortably do a trip to the office (and potentially back home) on a single charge. BMW claim consumption in the 740e at 2.2 litres per 100km, which I suppose given the right circumstances with a fully charged battery could be achieved on a single journey. However that number is completely meaningless over the vehicle’s lifetime as you’ll spend most of your time running double digits on the petrol motor.
A few ancillary services are being offered by BMW, all surrounding their range of plugin hybrid and full electric vehicles. As one might argue that the grid power in South Africa is dirtier than using fuel, so BMW will offer to build you a solar charging car port out of very sustainable bamboo for around R300,000.
I don’t know that I’m fully convinced by hybrid technology. I think a good diesel motor can be more efficient and less of a pollutant over a vehicle’s lifetime. However living an environmentally sensitive lifestyle is a very big thing right now and accordingly the draw of the 740e is quite strong. It’s an ultra luxury way of moving about while having all the right eco-credentials. Don’t be surprised to see a good few CEO’s wafting about in iPerformance BMW’s in the near future.
