GET M DIVISION TO BUILD A COUPLE OF MONSTERS
STEP 5 THIS M2 SOUNDS LIKE NOTHING ELSE. WHICH IS OKAY BECAUSE THERE’S NO OTHER CAR LIKE IT
Her name is Katharina, and right now she is everyone’s darling at the Bavarian Motor Works. Her address is Daimlerstrasse 19 in Garching-Hochbrück, epicentre of the go-faster BMW M division. But Katharina also has second homes at the Nürburgring and in Miramas, where BMW keeps its biggest proving ground. Kathy – if you don’t mind – has been spotted several times on public roads recently, where her swirly camouflage attracted the attention of spy photographers.
Because Katharina is not a person but a project. A project that at a glance looks like the BMW M2 CS. Except from behind, where that car’s four trademark exhaust pipes are conspicuous by their absence. Close your eyes, listen, and another point of difference becomes clear – Katharina’s high-pitched soundtrack is a far cry from the growling, multi-cylinder racket with which M cars are synonymous. This M2 sounds like absolutely nothing else, which is perfectly okay, because there is no other car like it.
Next year, Mdivision will celebrate its 50th anniversary. Such an occasion warrants a pretty special birthday present. You guessed it: the car expected to roll out of the cake and blow out the candles with plenty of brouhaha is Project Katharina – a very special electric M2.
At this point in time it’s based on the M2 CS. But come 2022 the new rear-wheel-drive G42 2-series will make a much better fit, even though an M version of that car won’t surface before 2023. In the unlikely scenario of the M development team having to step back from the 2-series, the monstrous DNA of Katharina the Great could be transferred easily, and at short notice, to the M3 or M4.
And what a monster this is! One megawatt of raw power – that’s 1000kW, or 1321bhp. Think about that for a moment. This awesome kraftwerk consists of four electric motors, one per wheel. Together they offer a radically advanced level of torque vectoring hitherto available only to the cars you see in cartoons. This constantly variable, four-figure, on-demand punch is supported by the most extreme battery technology conceived to date at the group’s future- energy campus on the outskirts of Munich.
Although this is all still top-secret stuff, reliable sources claim Katharina has already lapped the Nordschleife in under seven minutes, besting the hardly underpowered M8 Competition by more than 40 seconds and putting the electric M2 in Porsche Taycan Turbo S territory. We don’t yet know how many laps the future uber-BMW can run before being ⊲
black-flagged by excessive tyre wear, cooling issues or a fast-receding state of charge. But in a way that’s immaterial, because the key mission of this advanced M2 is to confirm that emissions-free high performance and M-level handling can go hand in hand.
Acceleration from a standing start is expected to split the 2.0 to 2.5sec bracket. At least as impressive is the brutal throttle response at speed, when wheelspin can be induced in the dry even above 75mph, sources say. So far, Katharina is a work in progress and not yet an approved programme. But according to information gathered from an English powertrain specialist involved in the R&D work, a run of stripped-out and relatively ascetic (no rear seats; carbonfibre panels and roof; hollow-spoke mag wheels; thinwalled glass) limited-edition specials is very much on the cards. Watch this space. And start saving.
This spring, BMW showed the undisguised production i4 – a proper electric BMW with batteries in its belly and enough poke to please impatient speed junkies. Marketing pulled the launch forward three months to out-click the competition and to leave enough ramp-up room for the iX SUV, which debuts only three months later in November.
But where the i4 gets really exciting is when you add the letter M and some lessons from Katharina and find yourself with the 600bhp i4M, complete with a big, fat 120kWh battery. This car is in the works, and its job will be to democratise some of the tech that promises to make that battery-electric hyper-M2 a gamechanger.
Fundamental to the electrification of M will be the hardware at its disposal. BMW’s high-voltage energy system, known as HEAT, comes in three basic sizes. On top of this volume-biased threesome, insiders expect two high-performance variations masterminded by the M division and accordingly labelled ML and MXL.
We’re talking 125kWh-plus batteries here, but what matters even more is the different cell chemistry, which promises an increased number of fast-charging and discharge cycles, a balanced mix of regeneration, performance and coasting sequences, intelligent cooling management and advanced performance electronics. The voltage is expected to increase ⊲
ADD THE LETTER M TO THE i4 AND YOU FIND YOURSELF IN THE 600BHP i4M, COMPLETE WITH 120kWh BATTERY
from 400 to 800 volts (increasing voltage reduces resistance losses, while also reducing weight – thanks to slimmer, lighter cabling – and accelerating charging times) and BMW is even toying with 1200 volts. But at this level the regulators still require impracticalities like documented grounding after every charge…
But if the great Pirelli adverts of the past have taught us one thing, it’s that power is nothing without control. And it’s in this key area – the melding of chassis set-up, stability-control systems and power electronics into a cohesive driving experience – that BMW can point to the i3 and i8 and argue they were not a waste of time. Both drove brilliantly, with the i3 particularly impressive given its unlikely shape and footprint.
And a great deal of time and money has gone into R&D since. Look at the i3S, which debuted a more intelligent eDrive powertrain in which, rather than being tamed by a remote stability-control system, the car’s punchy output was regulated at source, within the drive unit itself, by systems able to respond 50 times faster than a conventional set-up. Then there’s the new hardware, BMW’s fifth-generation eDrive, which arrived on the iX3 and will give the i4 the best possible start in life. If the iX3 is a fairly unremarkable electric SUV on paper, on the road – most unexpectedly – it drives with a poise and a precision that calls to mind the best of
BMW’s engine-powered SUVs. And if Frank Weber and his team can pull off something of an Ultimate Driving Machine with that unpromising set of components, imagine what it can achieve with the i4M, based as it will be on the same CLAR platform that the new M3/M4, with a few choice modifications, is putting to such good use right now.
Between now and 2025, all new electric BMWs will be based on advanced versions of the current FAAR and CLAR architectures. One of the last volume models hatched on this platform is the next 5-series, due in late 2023. So, what of that electric M5 we keep hearing so much about? Although an electric i5 is definitely in the ong (see box, right), packaging constraints and the absence of radically more capable batteries practically rule out the projected i5M, which has been pushed back. Instead there is talk of an M5 Performance model sharing its 750bhp power-hybrid drivetrain with project Rockstar, the X8 M hyper-SUV which is said to boast two e-motors in addition to its awesome V8.
One rung below, insiders claim that the first BMW to benefit from the new N-Car matrix – the 2025 platform that’s prompted Oliver Zipse’s Neue Klasse analogy – is the next 3-series, due in 2025. And there’s a certain symmetry to BMW’s critical next phase being spearheaded by the current machine that most closely resembles those of the first Neue Klasse.
IN THE ELECTRIC M2, WHEELSPIN CAN BE INDUCED IN THE DRY EVEN ABOVE 75MPH, SOURCES SAY