BMW has lifted the wraps off its latest take on the Concept Active Tourer, offering a further glimpse at the firm’s front-wheel drive future.
The BMW Concept Active Tourer Outdoor is a more rugged, lifestyle version of the company’s Concept Active Tourer and will reportedly find its way into production as a GT-badged spinoff of the 1 Series.
This concept’s modular interior features a foldaway bicycle carrier, a floating centre console and, somewhat bravely, a leather-lined cover for the boot floor storage compartment. The Concept Active Tourer Outdoor’s wheelbase measures 2 670 mm, which is marginally shorter than that of the previous concept, but its overall dimensions are marginally taller and longer.
The BMW Concept Active Tourer Outdoor utilizes a plug-in hybrid powertrain that incorporates a turbocharged 1,5-litre petrol engine and an electric motor fed by a lithium-ion battery pack to develop a combined power output of 140 kW. BMW claims a 0-100 km/h sprint time of less than eight seconds and a top speed of 200 km/h.
In addition to brake energy recovery and start/stop, the BMW Concept Active Tourer Outdoor’s powertrain also features an Eco Pro system that modulates the amount of energy channelled to such electrically operated ancillaries as the air conditioning and power steering to further improve fuel efficiency.
Reports suggest that the concept is underpinned by BMW’s new ULK1 (Unter Klasse) platform, which will form the foundations of several 1- and 2 Series models, as well as all future Minis. This platform will accommodate both front- and all-wheel drivetrain arrangements and will allow BMW to save a great deal of expenditure on development – something to will contribute to the firm’s plans to produce more than 900 000 ULK1-based vehicles a year.
