A test driver has written off a prototype of BMW’s upcoming i8 hybrid supercar after skidding off a greasy trunk road near the Bavarian town of Freising.
“He was going a little bit too fast,” police spokesman Nikolaus Bischof told Germany’s Autobild gazette. The 30-year-old pilot was not breaking the limit, but the speed at which he was travelling was “not appropriate considering the wet road conditions.” The test driver lost control of the exclusive petrol-electric sports car which crashed into a metal barrier and spun around to face traffic on the wrong side of the road.
The man escaped injury and was able to clamber out of one of the car’s distinctive up-and-over gull-wing doors.
BMW spokesman Wieland Buech declined to put a figure on the value of the written-off car. The much-vaunted i8 is being launched as a rival to high-end Porsche and Ferrari models.
The high-performance car goes on sale with prices starting at €126,000 ($172,000). The testbed vehicle was worth more, owing to sophisticated measuring equipment on board.
