Have BMW, Will Park Under Bamboo: BMW Creates Fancy Charging Carport For i Models

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You’re rich, we get it. Your mid-engine coupe has butterfly doors and packs $26,000 worth of custom Louis Vuitton bags in the boot. And because it’s a plug-in hybrid with a BMW badge, you don’t just recharge the battery at a Walgreens. You park it under an artsy, solar-powered carport made from bamboo and carbon fiber.

The industrial designers at BMW DesignworksUSA—who have reimagined everything from first-class airline cabins to John Deere tractors—are a versatile bunch. Their i Solar Carport concept is the prettiest way to leave your $137,000 i8 in the shade and fill up the 7.1-kWh lithium-ion battery pack. Bamboo beams and white linkages support a 3.6-kW, 88-square-foot solar array of “glass-glass” panels—solar panels that place translucent, lightweight glass behind the cells instead of a film. In theory, the glass is better at shielding the sensitive photovoltaic cells from the elements and guarantees them for 30 years as opposed to the industry’s regular 25-year warranty.

The panels are connected to the BMW-spec 240-volt wall charger, which outputs 7 kW through a standard Level 2 plug and can charge the i8 in under 2 hours (or the smaller, cheaper i3 in more time owing to its larger battery capacity). As if the crosshatch patterns the solar panels project on the car’s surface weren’t cool enough, BMW fits carbon-fiber nettings between the bamboo beams, presumably to keep the door handles nice and cool and out of the sun.

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BMW says it will sell the carport in Europe later this year in three sizes and has no plan (or price) to offer it in the U.S. Considering Tesla owners can already get subsidized home solar installations and lease the panels at a low rate, BMW would have a tough time here, even among the Louis V crowd.

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