BMW i100 Coupe Active Hybrid in 2013

The BMW i100 Active Hybrid Coupe

As we’ve said on umpteen occassions, the car world is an ants nest of rumour. We get emails every day with the latest hype doing the rounds, and if you took seriously every mad idea wrapped up as inside knowledge on every car forum on the Interweb, you’d go mad.

But some rumours have credibility; credence; substance. They are the ones we try to sift out to make sure we bring you as much of the wheat with as little of the chaff as possible. And the rumour we hear today from Bild in Germany is that BMW are planning a car to make a dent in the ‘Eco’ offerings coming from the competition in the next few years. The like of the Mercedes SLS E-Cell and the Auid e-Tron. Which makes sense.

Further sense comes in the assertion that this new BMW – dubbed the BMW i100 Coupe Active Hybrid – will be based on BMW’s star turn at the Franfurt Motor Show last year – the BMW Vision EfficientDynamics Concept Car.

The BMW i100 Coupe will come as a plug-in hybrid with a short electric only drive range on offer. It will get a three-pot engine which will deliver around 175bhp and a pair of electric motors which will produce a further 100bhp. All of which is – near as damn it – a straight duplicate of what BMW gave us on the Vision ED. When we reported on that concept last year we said:

The Vision Concept is a plug-in Hybrid with a  1.5 litre, 3-pot turbo diesel with 163bhp and a peak of 224lb/ft of torque. Which in itself is pretty impressive, but when you throw in to the equation a couple of electric motors – one in the transmission as in the ActiveHybrid 7 and another at the front wheels – you end up with 356bhp and 590lb/ft of torque. That translates in to a 0-60 mph of 4.6 seconds.

So whether Bild are making all this up because there’s a bit of a shortage of news, or they have an inside line, it’s hard to judge. They say the car is due in 2013, that it will be a 2+2 and cost at least €100k. And there will be an M version – the BMW i100M.

Still, it does make sense and does add up. But is it all just a bit too obvious?

Wheat from Chaff. Never easy.

Source: Bild

By Cars UK