 This is the single most outrageous thing to come out of Munich in a very long time. Powered by a precise combination of electricity and fossil fuel, this insane machine brushes up against the $150,000 mark. This is the future of BMW. This is the i8. It's just like, the car is from the future, right? It doesn't feel like a BMW. It doesn't feel like a BMW. It doesn't feel like anything else I've ever been in or around. It just feels like from another dimension. It's like it was teleported in from another dimension, and now I'm driving it. If you weren't told that it was a hybrid, you could conceivably believe that you were just driving a nice sports car. It just feels like really rock solid. Everything feels like it's constructed immaculately. Everywhere you look in and around the i8, there are bits and pieces of technology that are going to find their way into the company's entire lineup over the coming years, one way or another. Take the car's frame, for instance. It's made of something called carbon fiber reinforced plastic, CFRP, and it's significantly lighter than the metals found in a typical car. You can see bits and pieces of CFRP when you open the i8's exotic scissor doors and trunk. It's a dark woven material that you don't really see on many other cars. One notable exception is the i8's little sibling, the i3. In fact, in many ways, the i8 is a rolling add for the far more attainable i3, which starts at about $41,000. Then there's the drivetrain. The i8 is a gas-electric hybrid that's powered by an electric motor in front and a three-cylinder engine in the back. You can run it on electric power alone all the way up to 75 miles an hour, if you like, but when you pair them together, you get a total of 357 horsepower. That's not really up to supercar standards, but then again, this isn't about making the fastest exotic on the block. If it was, they'd just throw a V10 or 12 in there and call it a day. One thing that sets the i8 apart from your average supercar is that it has an electric motor driving the front two wheels, and then the relatively, well not relatively, very small three-cylinder turbocharged engine in the back driving the rear wheels. And so you end up with an all-wheel drive system, and you can set it into electric-only mode, and you can also set it into a power mode that keeps both the electric and the gas engine turned on at all times for maximum power. It definitely feels a little different from your average car, but it's surprisingly poised, and for lack of a better word, normal. I think that you could get into this car having driven pretty much any sports car or GT and feel right at home in this and not feel like you're missing anything. Right now, of course, since we have this parking lot to ourselves, we're operating in sport mode, which is the highest performance mode that the car has. So let's have some fun with it. Okay. Yikes. The i8 is by no means the fastest car you can buy, but it's not slow. I'm definitely going to puke when this is over. BMW claims 0 to 60 in 4.2 seconds, which puts it in the upper echelon of sports cars. That's particularly impressive when you consider the tiny three-cylinder twin-turbo engine spooling up just a few feet behind you. To make sure that the i8's sound lives up to its image, engine sounds are piped into the cabin. I can't really tell what's real and what's fake, but I do know that the car sounds great, throaty, powerful, like there's a V8 or V10 in there. There are a lot of beautiful cars in the world, but this one's different. I wouldn't even really call it beautiful, at least not in the traditional sense. It's technological. It just looks like it's full of patents and gadgets and doodads. And I think everyone on the road agrees. Driving the i8 is a social experience. You can't stop for food or gas or really much of anything without people stopping by to check it out. Something about those scissor doors, I think, which don't really serve any function but to look awesome. The insane tail lights, the low-aggressive stance, and the tri-color paint scheme don't hurt either. It's been impossible to do anything without attracting attention. We had not one but two state troopers stop their patrol units to ask about it. One got in the car. It's basically a feat of gymnastics to climb in and out. That's partly because the i8 is so low to the ground, but it's also because there's a wide, tall sill at the bottom and an open door at the top. You kind of have to get one leg up and down to get the car to start. You kind of have to get one leg in, sit on the sill, scooch over, and pull the other leg in if you want to drop into your fancy ride without looking like a fool. On the way out, you have to remember to reverse the process. Otherwise, you'll end up with a hand on the pavement as you flop out of the car. Fortunately, once you're inside, you don't really ever want to get out. It's a comfortable, cozy, futuristic environment. It doesn't necessarily look as fancy as you might expect on a car this expensive, but it's not bad. At night, light pipes all around the console and doors can be configured to glow blue, orange, or white, which adds a lot to the future car feel. Directly ahead of the driver, a full LCD takes the place of a traditional instrument cluster. This is becoming pretty commonplace nowadays, and a color heads-up display up in the windshield means that you never really need to look down. Behind you, there are technically rear seats, but don't take them too seriously. There's no real chance of a full-grown adult ever sitting back here, but you could stash a child or two in a pinch. Bottom line? I was really sad to give back the i8 after three days on the road. It feels poised and balanced, and with a low center of gravity, it's a good sports car should. It feels really solid, and it feels like a tourer, meaning that you could take it on a road trip and not want to kill yourself after a few hours. Either through engine noise or vibration or this harsh road feel, it's comfortable, but still sporty. I can't get enough of the engine noise, and I still can't tell what's real and what's fake. But I don't care, because it just sounds dope. I've heard the car go by as a bystander, and it sounds good from the outside too. It's music to my ears. It sounds great. With a gun to my head, I'm not sure it's the first car I would buy with $150,000 to spend, but it's still an incredible display of a lot of cutting-edge car tech in one place. If the i8 is a little peek into the future of driving, count me in.