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One more hybridized 3-series, this time with a plug.
The entry-luxury sedan segment’s dominant Germans are about to extend their merciless battle to plug-in hybrids. Audi is prepping such a version of the A4 and Mercedes-Benz has a corded C-class in the works. Naturally, BMW’s pluggable 3-series is also imminent.
The large unanswered question in this emerging sub-segment, however, is exactly how much EV range folks count on from their plug-in hybrid. For its element, BMW is about to take a quite huge bet that much less plug-in hybrid may well just be a lot more. Audi has staked out 30 miles of pure-electric running as its baseline. BMW, even though, thinks 22 miles is a lot for the 3-series eDrive. (Mercedes agrees, citing 20 miles for its C350 PHEV.) If you need to have any much more than that, BMW will gladly steer you more than to the i3 or the more sensible but still-unconfirmed i5.
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If it all goes to plan, the shorter variety will give the BMW—which, since no a single remembers the “eta”-engined E30, is really likely to be badged 328e—some positive aspects. To cite just 3: It has fewer lithium-ion cells than the Audi and is as a result less expensive, a smaller battery is a lot less complicated to package amongst its rear-drive hardware, and the complete hybrid component set weighs much less. If it does not all go to plan, it will imply too many folks will uncover the Audi’s further variety is the difference amongst charging the car as soon as a day or twice.
Nonetheless, this is the vehicle BMW improvement engineer Helmuth Wiesler is counting on to future-proof the brand’s most critical model line against emissions laws and taxes, so he’s taking it all extremely seriously. There’s also the truth that BMW plans to make a plug-in version of each and every main model it sells.
The Electrically Boosted Heart
His development group gave the 3-series eDrive BMW’s new 2.-liter turbocharged and direct-injected B48 4-cylinder gasoline engine. It has 180 horsepower and 236 lb-ft of torque and works via an 8-speed automatic transmission that sends output to the rear axle. But within this transmission lies the eDrive’s trick: BMW has properly swapped out the classic torque converter for a “torque transformer,” which is, to the rest of us, an electric motor.
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This 95-hp electric motor (sorry, “torque transformer”) acts straight on the input shaft, so little energy is wasted. And not only does it push far more power and torque under acceleration, it also acts as a generator whenever the auto decelerates and requires more than starter-motor duties.
It gets the juice to do its perform from a refrigerant—not water—cooled 7.6-kWh lithium-ion battery pack mounted at the back of the vehicle. (The battery pack’s operating variety is the middle 5.5 kWh.) It is not all excellent news, even though, since the housing for the pack pushes the trunk floor up by a lot more than an inch.
Combining the 2 powerplants for maximum urge, as the 3-series eDrive does in its Sport mode, benefits in 245 horsepower, which is about on the funds for the standard 328i, as nicely as 295 lb-ft of torque. Yet the auto scores a European combined consumption figure of 118 mpg, albeit on a test cycle optimized for plug-ins.
Continued…
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