Last week BMW M, the Bavarian manufacturer’s performance division, released an episode of a YouTube series showcasing its developments in electrification. The star of the show was a quad-motor EV based on the BMW i4 — and the team went so far as to say that we would indeed see a production BMW M car with four motors in the future.
But, there was a quiet costar in the video: a white F87-chassis BMW M2 that appeared to have been turned into an EV. The hosts didn’t verbally acknowledge the car, but the footage was edited in a way that suggested the M2 held some sort of importance that would be revealed later. Today, BMW released the second episode of BMW M Electrified, where it shows off the electric M2 nicknamed “The Beast.”
“The Beast” Is A Borrowed Nickname From BMW History
The car gets its nom de guerre from the fact that it’s so hard to control. The team doesn’t reveal exactly what this thing is hiding under its sheet metal, but BMW M dynamics engineer Michael Sailer says, “This is honestly a super raw vehicle.” He adds, “It is super powerful, and as it doesn’t have the calmness, it is really hard to control.”
It started life in 2018 as a tool for testing out various technologies to determine their suitability for production. BMW describes it as a “big bang in the development of M GmbH’s electric drive system.” It doesn’t exactly sound like it was ever a recipe for an actual production car, though. At least we’ll be getting an electric M3 soon.
But the nickname is borrowed from another BMW as BMW M CEO Franciscus van Meel explains. Giving a quick rundown on M history, van Reel shows us the BMW X5 Le Mans. BMW put its Le Mans-winning V-12 engine in an X5 in order to prove to the world that a performance SUV was possible. “We called this car ‘The Beast,'” van Meel says, “because it was completely uncontrollable. You always have to start out with a beast that seems to be uncontrollable, and then the next step is, make it controllable.”
A Cliffhanger Resolved
The last episode ended with a bit of a cliffhanger. The M team put the BMW management board behind the wheel of that four-motor i4 prototype in order to get their thoughts on it, and after getting out of the car, we were told the board members were silent. This week, we get to learn what happened next.
Van Meel recounts, “After a couple of seconds that felt like minutes, Oliver Zipse, our CEO, said, ‘Sorry for us waiting so long, but we had to process our feelings because this was incredible. We never thought you could do something like this with a car.'”
Episode 2 doesn’t end with such a cliffhanger, but it does give us something to look forward to for the next episode. The team ends up in Arjeplog, Sweden, so we can expect to learn about testing high-performance EVs in winter weather. There will almost certainly be some donuts involved.
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