So who’s got the best hand? Well, BMW have undoubtedly made the prettiest concept, thought it’s not going to look like that once it’s on your drive and it would take a braver man that me to take it through the local car wash. Unfortunatly they’ve also entirely missed the point, going for what I like to call ’selfish hybrid’, where the electric assist is their purely to provide some extra top end performance to a standard combustion engine. Admittedly it looks like a good engine, BMW have managed to wring a fair amount of power out of such a small number of cubes, it’s just a shame they made it run on Diesel so it’ll smother the leaves on trees and another generation will grow up with asthma. Maybe that’s why they gave it the ridiculous blue glow from behind the grill, to limit the number of units they sell…
On the other hand, Mercedes seem to have grasped the challenge a bit more firmly. Rather than a half hearted attempt at bolting some green credentials on to a fat engine they’ve taken the approach of using the petrol engine purely to drive a generator. This means it can be geared to run at peak efficiency, which is the point of these cars, right? The other benefit of this is that when the batteries/fuel cells/super capacitors get good enough, the petrol engine can be replaced while the rest of the drive train remains the same.
In the end I think it is just a case of the manufacturers showing their true colours. Mercedes pioneer new technologies whereas BMW build high powered engines. If this is the best either of them have to offer I doubt we will be buying from ‘ze Germans’ in the future!
Martin: Its quite interesting to see
the two extremes at work here. Essentially, Mercedes have put the drivetrain of tomorrow into a car for today. BMW have put a drivetrain thats fairly doable today into a car for tomorrow. I like the Mercedes solution, it shows that they realize that Hydrogen is the way of the future. They may as well work on perfecting now so that they are ready when there is a supply.
In the meantime, while we still have some oil I’ll be quite happy if my next car burns petrol, but in significantly lower quantities. It strikes me that these two cars need to swap engines. Why not have the super efficient, clever hybrid stuff that can be charged at home and fueled at the local Shell station now? Then the hydrogen tech in a car that looks like a sci-fi film product placement one-off later.
At the end of the day it is encouraging to see these companies fighting over who is the greenest rather than who is the fastest for a change. I think that Mercedes will come through as the winner in this particular battle. I think they have made a concept for every type of powertrain possible so they are bound to be on the winning side in the end.
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