Nerd’s Eye View: LA Autoshow 2015 – BMW

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Heat exchangers everywhere keep the fluids cool. The driver’s side air flow opening is not the actual full size of the black plastic panel indicating BMW did not need the full size to get the cooling they needed.
I think these two openings in the front under tray are behind the radiator to help promote more airflow through the heat exchangers.
The fancy headlights require fancy cooling. So there are big heat sinks on the lighting modules to manage heat.
You better get used to this view. This is the 330e eDrive plug-in hybrid.
Paired with the 87-hp/185lb-ft torque electric motor is a 2.0L turbo 4-banger engine making 180-hp and 215lb-ft of torque. It may be a plug-in hybrid, but it can still do 0-60 in 5.9 seconds. I said a long time ago, the pairing of a turbo engine with an electric hybrid system made a ton of sense (the electric motor acts like anti-lag), and now the OEMs are offering this combination. Just like every modern engine bay, all the goods are hidden under plastic. BMW was able to design a nice and short intake system with the air box being on the same side as the turbo.
Here you can see the MAF sensor in the intake tube between the air box and intake tube heading downward towards the turbo.The turbo is actually visible on this engine. The wastegate is opened and closed by a linear electric actuator. Notice the extra linkage between the end of the actuator and the crank arm for the wastegate flapper in the turbo. Yeah, that kinematics class you took studying mechanical engineering actually does come in handy. And so does that heat transfer class which is why there is heat shielding all around the turbo to protect other bits against radiant heat transfer.

So there you have some of the new goodies BMW brought to the 2015 LA Auto Show. They brought a few go-fast toys along with some new go-far vehicles. BMW has a neighbor in Germany whose name starts with the letter ‘P’. This neighbor from Stuttgart brought a lot of go-fast goodies. We will have a look in the next segment from the 2015 LA Auto Show.

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