BMW Plans An Envirnmentally Friendly Supercar; 400 HP and Fuel Economy?

BMW Plans An Envirnmentally Friendly Supercar; 400 HP and Fuel Economy?

There's an eco-friendly BMW supercar, the Z10 ED, under consideration to showcase Bayerische Motoren Werke's suit of fuel-efficient, low-emission technologies, reports Britain's Autocar .

That's good news, but we wish sometimes that instead of packing all the good stuff into a $150,000 two-seat exotic, one of our major automakers would do so in an affordable family sedan.

We know it would still be costly because a lot of the components used to improve fuel economy and cut emissions are one-a-kind, just-developed-in-the lab sorts of stuff that must be hand-built and hand-fitted into an existing vehicle.

Still, it would be nice to show the 90 percent of the car-buying population that can't afford a Z10 supercar, or even a Tesla Roadster, that even the 'ol family hauler can be made green and that the exorbitant cost of the technologies will come down if people tell automakers, "Hey! That's what we want!"

But we digress, so, back to the Z10 ED we go.

According to the info Autocar winkled out of someone at BMW, the two-seater will use all the technologies now spread among the company's existing EfficientDynamics model lineup. That includes lightweight carbon fiber and aluminum chassis and body parts, green electronics, and nifty new engine and exhaust technologies.

The article quotes an unidentified BMW insider saying that the idea "is idea is to bring all the very latest technology together" to provide high performance " without overburdening the environment."

Doing that, the insider says, is a matter of gathering up existing technology and "applying in correctly."

Among the engines under consideration for the green Z10 is a high-pressure turbocharged direct-injection straight six that is smaller and lighter than the 3.0-liter engine now used in most every BMW model.

BMW wants to use engines such as that to improve efficiency and emissions across its entire lineup while maintaining the power and performance levels most of its customers expect.

In a Z10 ED it would likely produce in the area of 400 horsepower, delivered through a seven-speed, dual-clutch transmission. An electric starter-generator, engine stop-start technology and regenerative braking that would produce juice to be stored in a smallish lithium-ion battery pack could combine to boost fuel economy well above that normally expected of a
high performance engine.

John O'Dell:  is an AutoObserver Senior Editor. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter.