Thoughts?

[Roberto]

7 Series hybrids have been tickling my fancy of late, bit more presence than a 3 or 5.

[dergside]

7 Series hybrids have been tickling my fancy of late, bit more presence than a 3 or 5.

That's true Roberto, and definitely thinking outside the box. I think I mentioned along the way that I thought about an ActiveHybrid5 and there's quite a bit going for that in terms of being reasonable on VRT and being a 535i in all but name.

The scary part, and this applies to the 7 equivalent too, is the risk factor of the hybrid setup. Its really hybrid ver1.0 technology, tiny range in electric only, and potentially crippling cost risk if the battery pack, etc. goes wrong. Also, being ver1.0 and having sold in tiny numbers, I'd expect the system knowledge and hardware support to diminish quickly to the point they become obsolete. Its not entirely clear whether the car would continue to function in regular petrol mode alone in the event of serious fault or failure in the electric drivetrain components.

The battery & associated technology is advancing in leaps and bounds (and will continue to) and I'd see the older, cruder electric or hybrid solutions being a bit of a risk. Look and compare the tech between the ActiveHybrids and the next-gen in i3 and Plug-in Hybrids (think of these as ver2.0) over the second half of the decade and they're night and day. £5-7k is a range of figures I've seen for battery pack, etc. for an ActiveHybrid. That's a pretty hard figure to reconcile with a low single figure digit pure electric range, and the problem is that there isn't a very significant sample out there to see whether the risk is real or theoretical. I know that the newer ones are even more costly, but they are more substantial in terms of power, range, etc. One of the things the company I work for do is Battery Management Technology and I know the amount of engineering and development that has happened there in the past few years. As we see EV and Hyb ver3.0, further power and range improvements, more data about whole of life issues, economies of scale, etc. I think the earlier generations are going to fall by the wayside pretty quickly. That will be doubly true if we find a way past the practical issues of hydrogen fuel cell deployments.