BMW to roll out hydrogen-powered 7 Series http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060912/bs_nm/autos_bmw_hydrogen_dc_1 MUNICH (Reuters) - BMW will roll out the world's first hydrogen-burning car in serial production early next year, the German premium automaker said on Tuesday, eager to put its stamp on cars with green credentials. The specially equipped 7-Series executive cars emit only water vapor when running on hydrogen. The car hits the market next April and will be shown at the Los Angeles car show in November, the company said. It had said in March the hydrogen cars would arrive within two years. A spokesman said the car would be leased to selected customers rather than sold because of its high price. Leasing rates would be similar to those for a top-end BMW 760LI with a full-service package. The BMW 7 Series Hydrogen 7 Saloon is powered by a 260 hp twelve-cylinder engine and accelerates from 0-100 km/h (62 mph) in 9.5 seconds. Top speed is limited electronically to 230 km/h. BMW has said it intends to build a few hundred such cars at first. They will be able to switch between burning standard petrol and hydrogen so that drivers will not be left stranded while the infrastructure to deliver hydrogen is built up. "The integration of hydrogen drive in an existing vehicle concept which has already proven its merits in the market paves the way for an alternative to conventional drive concepts fully accepted in the market and with all the assets the customer is looking for in practice," BMW said. The space that two fuel tanks take up means only the 7-Series will offer the hydrogen package at first. BMW's long-term goal is to offer hydrogen motors in all its cars. BMW unveiled the world's fastest hydrogen-powered car at the 2004 Paris auto show. Dubbed the H2R, it can exceed 300 kilometers (185 miles) per hour and reaches 100 km per hour from a standing start in around six seconds. While BMW is developing fuel-cell driven cars as well, it says it is concentrating on the combustion engine because the sum total of its features and characteristics offers the largest number of advantages and benefits all in one.
lol People are going to pay $70,000 for this car and watch grandma pass them up in her Plymouth Acclaim. Seriously. I am excited though. Just go through with a two week training course on Hybrid/Electrical cars and these things are going to go out of style pretty damn quickly once other alternatives (like Hydrogen) pass them up.
I love that a guy named "Matchman" asked that question. (oh, and codell, check your email - whichever one you use to receive emails from this board)
i ordered a bmw 3 series that should be arriving in october. its an steptronic automatic. does any one know what exactly it is? they told me i could shift it to give the car some power when accelerating.
triptronic is a manual gear system that is electronically configured. You can switch from automatic into "manual" and use shift the gears yourself as opposed to having the car do it. The way automatic normally works is that it shifts gears at the point of optimum fuel efficiency. You can switch into two alternatives. One is sport mode where the car just shifts gears as fast as it possibly can which will give your car a boost at the expense of fuel efficiency. The other is the "triptronic/manual" mode where you can shift the gears yourself. However, it's not like traditional manual cars in the sense that it doesn't have a clutch and doesn't use traditional gears so you can't mess up the car by shifting at the wrong time. Also, if you forget to shift down, the car automatically does it for you.
