Surprising modern study at IAA
At the IAA in Frankfurt in 1991 a small, fully electrically powered car made its debut. It has cool kidneys as a grille, the drive on the rear wheels and blue and white logos on the nose and buttocks. It turned out to be a long way from this BMW E1 to the i3.
BMW has been working with electric cars for over forty years. It is no coincidence that the brand entered two electric-powered 1602s at the 1972 Olympic Games, which were held practically next to BMW’s brand new headquarters: a great promotion for the brand. The cars mainly transport dignitaries and turn out to be handy, because soundless camera cars. They unintentionally give the coverage of the marathon some extra tension, because their range of sixty whole kilometers is only just sufficient for the distance to be covered by the athletes.
The first BMW E1 from 1991 was a city car for four people plus luggage.
Building a better car around the electric drive
After extensive field testing in the 1980s with a series of converted 3-series, BMW has come to the conclusion that it is better to build an entirely new car around the electric drive than to adapt the electric drive to the limitations of an existing model. You don’t drive electric on a highway, BMW says, but in the city. And that idea led to the first BMW E1 in 1991.
Sprayed in a fashionable metallic orange paint, it is quite a remarkable little car. And all 346 centimeters breathe the sleek design of BMW. If you look under the shiny skin, you can see how much the Bavarian technicians have done their best to make the E1 an innovative little car. The way in which the available space is used alone commands respect. The E1, which is even slightly shorter than the Nuova Fiat 500, fits four adults plus luggage. The body consists of an aluminum structure to which plastic panels are attached, a way of building that, according to BMW, makes the car both strong and light. makes. The 200 kg battery pack is placed under the rear seat, while the engine and transmission are integrated in the rear axle. This last fact has a reassuring effect on even the most critical BMW enthusiasts, because this electric city sparrow has the drive ‘just’ on the ‘right’ wheels! The performance is adequate: the top speed is 120 km/h and acceleration from 0 to 50 km/h can count the E1 in a lap six. Charging the batteries takes six hours and for this purpose the driver has a range of four marathons at his disposal.
Two years after the E1 debut, a new, radically modified edition of the E1 is presented – also in Frankfurt. This is technically more advanced, because it has a system that can store braking energy in the battery pack. In addition, the second E1 fits more seamlessly into the BMW range in terms of interior and exterior design. That last, crucial step, however, is two decades away, because only in 2013 did BMW put the i3 on sale. Munich at least managed to keep the tension going. And last summer the curtain fell for the i3. Earlier this year, we looked back for the Oude Doos section in a 1992 AutoWeek in which we also wrote about E1, and also about the sequel E2.
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl