DETROIT AUTO SHOW: BMW Where Are Your Hybrids?

They're in Europe

Americans are used to gas guzzling V-8s. But some of the more enlightened of us have moved on to hybrids, as have some Europeans (witness the rise in sales of Lexus hybrids).

Uhh, sorry, but I think there are about twelve Lexus hybrids on the road in Europe.

Forgot to mention- that's up from six. 200% increase! Go Lexus! At this rate, they'll sell 24 next year!

funny, lexus expects to sell 500 LS in britain in a whole year.
i don't think some people understand just how little respect lexus has over here, but the amount of advertising they do way exceeds the volume sold, they must be losing money.

and renlex, toyota land cruiser...smooth diesel? you mean the noisy, clattery, 170hp 3.0 4 cylinder in the land cruiser? or the even worse 200hp 4.0 litre 6 cylinder in what we call the land cruiser amazon?
if you had to pic a toyota diesel you had to pic the worst! the 2.2 unit in the rav 4 is way better.

I don't think people buy BMWs to save gas.

Agree. Not to mention they don't like speed racer wannabe.

by the way what is that LF stands for? LFANT. LOL!!

No, that wouldn't have phased them at all. They're preparing to loan their Hydrogen 7 Series models as we speak.

here is another fact based answer you can learn from agent 009, BMW, Mercedes and GM last year are doing a joint venture hybrid engine project, you really don't need a high school education to work for autospies.

XeroK00L, sure, but does that mean any of us will buy them? Of course not! We, as car enthusiasts, arguably know the most about cars- and know that hybrids aren't the answer.

HEY.....maybe BMW can keep its credibility as a premium auto maker with conventional combustion engines!!!!

How dare they!!!

Grow up dammit

BMW has not jumped onto the hybrid bandwagon, where manufacturers are hoping for someone to design affordable, light-weight, long-lasting batteries that create little pollution when they are manufactured, coupled with low-cost, low-pollution sources of electricity.

Instead, BMW has jumped onto the "hydrogen as a fuel" bandwagon, where manufacturers are hoping for someone to figure out a cost effective, low pollution way to generate vast quantities of usable hydrogen, liquefy it, and transport it to a network of as yet non-existent liquid hydrogen storage/distribution stations.

The Project Manager's Credo: "Hope" is not an effective strategy for success.

I'm sick of gas engines. They had their day, but when you really think about it, they suck. 6 speeds needed because the torque bandwidth is so pathetic. Dozens of different liquid subsystems and pumps, coolers, tubes, and radiators. All kinds of maintenance hassles. I say replace it all with an electric motor to each wheel, a controller, and a lithium battery. I can't wait for the Telsa reviews to come out. I love my 330i, but I'm SO ready to move on when it becomes feasible.

MDalle, I don't buy into the range argument. The Tesla will get in excess of 200 miles (250 is claimed), and it is a sports model. It is 2007 and batteries are improving constantly. Besides, you can "top off" the charge and get 85% or so of capacity with a 45 minute meal break.

Remember when cordless screwdrivers came out in the 80's? And now we have 36 volt circular saws and impact wrenches! I would NOT bet against innovation in battery optimization and chemistry.

And of course solar is a dumb, dumb idea. I'm not a dorky green guy, I'm a car guy through and through.

MDalle, there seems to be a bit of a disconnect in our understanding of battery life. As an IT guy, I am quite confident that they will be able to provide a "fuel gauge" at least as accurate as a gas engine, in an electric. This isn't a "dumb" electric like a cordless vacuum, it won't just run out at some random spot...any more than a petrol-based car will. I've never run out of gas in my life, and I don't see it happening in an electric. If it did, I'd call the tow truck and be very ashamed.

A bit of humour on the battery debate, anybody remember back in the mid 90's when all of a sudden batteries took a massive leap forward? We had the NiMh and the Li-ion battery suddenly pop up from all manufacturers from nowhere, nearly over night. Now why did this happen as such, why didn't someone have a monopoly on this industry and milk it for all it was worth for years? Well you just need to look at the owner's of the initial patents on the technology, and it's no-one but royal dutch shell. Remember the rocking 80's, opec and when all the oil companies started getting worried about thier future, so what did they do went out and bought the rights and patents to the bulk of the decent alt. fuels work.
And as all of us would expect they're still doing that in an attempt to hold back feasible and potential alterantives for as long as possible and they're probably still doing it.

You have some good points about the complexity of measuring capacity. I had not remembered the big differences in temperature but have certainly experienced them when I was flying the very marginal setups (i.e. they could barely take off the ground under their own power) of RC model airplanes in the 80's.

I still think it would be fairly simple to measure each cell, ambient temperature, etc., and come up with a reasonable number with reserve capacity. It could even be integrated with GPS--if you planned to do Pikes Peak it could estimate your range off your destination.

I've also thought that if the government was really serious about this problem they could build an infrastructure to make it work. Each car would have a slot to accept a range-extending cell which could be freely traded at filling stations. It would be leased for a certain dollar amount, and each one would have a chip to monitor useage and cell health data. You'd just trade them for a fresh cell just like you gas up a car now.

t bone, the range on the Tesla is probably not indicative of what the range would be on a "normal" car. You're using the fact that it's a sport car to imply that a non-sports car would get even better range because of lessened performance requirements, when in reality a normal car would have a lot of things going against it that would actually hurt the range (like weight, extra features that use electricity, etc.) Range is easier to come by when you basically just have an electric go kart, can you imagine trying the same thing on a car with power windows, power locks, power seats, heated or a/c seats, power steering, xenons, navigation, moonroof, sunshades, full HVAC, etc. All those features are on a Camry, God forbid you even attempt it on an LS, 7-series, S-class, or A8 type vehicle.

Maybe one day they can get around all that, but that day is not today.

MDalle - I agree with your opinion on Lithium based vs tungsten battery life. It's almost all or nothing with lithium batteries. However, the car is equipped with regenerative braking that aids in keeping a charge to the batteries. I'm sure if you gun it after every stop, then the 250 mi range is out the door. Tesla did convince enough people to sell out their entire 2007 production run. Score one for the little guy.

JRob - no xenons for the Tesla. Kinda stupid since HID's have regulated ballasts that output approx 35W and draw as little as 2A instead of 100W halogens that suck up about 8A a piece! $100k for a car with no HIDs.

OK.... i was going to leave this alone... but so much stupidity must be informed.
Firstly petrol electric hybrids are not the answer all you are doing is substituting one polluting fossil fuel for another, that being petroleum for coal in most of the world. Yes i'm sure someone is going to say nuclear somewhere and yes it puts less pollution in the atmosphere, but the pollution is still there... in a barrell. Then i also suppose some dimwit will propose hydro-power or wind power, hydro is only a renewable resource when it is perpetual most hydro-power systems are used as large batteries and do nothing to decrease pollution along with wind power along with solar power are an utter joke.
On the 2nd point the motivation for hybrid engines is simple there needs to be a move away from traditional petroleum fuels. Not global warming, it is clear that a significant amount of people have subscribed to the media farce that is global warming. There is not 1 single credible geologist, physicist or meteorologist who has found and/or published any empirically verifiable evidence that global warming has or for that matter ever will happen. If is simply a construct of and overly zealous media capitalising on the basic element of fear that lies in the uninformed general populous.
In terms of hydrogen powered cars they appear to be an extremely viable alternative as obtaining adequate amounts of hydrogen is relatively easy and it can be extracted from sea water without too much hassle in reasonable quantities. The issue with hydrogen is simple, the oil companies, why would they want to put themselves out of business? Which leads to why would the governments want to push hydrogen when the oil companies are significant donors to every political party around the globe?
If you want to look at true progress in alternative fuels look at the Brazillian ethanol market, viable cheap and totally non-oil dependant. It's just a pity that the governments in most of the developed world aren't as open minded when it comes to such policy.

not a single scientific paper disagrees with global warming. however, 56% of media stories do.
now who's wrong?
please not the 10 warmest years on record (going back several million years) all occured in the last 13. and average US temperatures are up by 1 celcius from 1900. that's a heck of a lot in 100 years.

Rupert, OK the 10 warmest years on record hey... going back several million years yes? Well either you know something i don't or your braindead... Where are all these records of the past million years? Actually as a matter of fact where are the records of the past 100years? Oh they don't exist! Records have only been kept for the past 60 years or so and at that only the past 20 years have had sufficient data to make any conclusions. So you should be saying in the last 25 years that 13 have been pretty hot!
Now hmm.... what could explain that? How about natural temperature variations over time? Yes these things do vary! To pull out a few examples for you over you preferred time frame i.e. the last million years, well in that time there have been several ice-ages where the best part of the worlds surface was frozen solid with ice... now how do you explain that? Massive Global cooling?
We do not exist in a stable climatic weather system, it is a simple but complex dynamic system that is chaotic which in turn provides natural behaviour that is volatile, a similar example you may understand is the stock market it has natural volatility and is unperdictable as such.
I will rephrase one part of what i said earlier, there is no scientists with empirical evidence to prove the existence of global warming as as a basic function of empirical studies it is impossible to prove it until it has actually already happened or has been happening for a significant amount of time.

On a side note what i find rather humourous about this whole debate is when my youngest brother who is presently finishing off his degrees in civil engineering and meteorology/geophysics is that he tells me when he sits in the meteorology/geophysics subjects they explain that there is no scientific basis for global warming and when he goes into his engineering management subjects they throw such banter around to the contrary. It's about time people stopped buying into the hysteria and looked at the real factual evidence behind it.
Now instead of just claiming that there is evidence to the contrary someone please find me a scientic paper published by a professor at a mainstream university that proves to the contrary. As is the case here saying something doesn't make it true, you need evidence.

Huu if you bothered to look it up you'd realise that Brazil's industry is top notch and is good for the environment. The Ethanol is derived from the waste products and excess production from Brazil's world leading sugar industry. In the US they use the waste products from Corn to make ethanol and there are several other methods to do this. No rainforests are harmed in this process.
Why is solar power a joke!! Do the math with the best solar cells and if you covered the entire roof of a common house with these solar cells you would have enough energy too... wait for it... power 1 60Watt light globe for a day!

The DC cells are great i'm not knocking them.

I'm not arguing that pollution is good in anyway, simply google what happened in london in the early 1900's and the thermal inversion layer that formed... The sulfur trioxide emissions from the local coal power station killed inexcess of 1000 people a day for around a week. Due to the pollution smogging up the city.

I'm also not going to even start on the flaws of attempting to model a chaotic system over a timeframe of a 1000 years, why have a look at how wrong a 7 day weather forecast is, now would you trust that over a year, 10 years let a lone 1000? Hell no!