Skip to content

How The Wire Helped Me Understand the 2023 BMW 760i xDrive

    A white BMW 760i in Joshua Tree
    enlarge / The launch of the new i7 and 7 series was a two day affair and we couldn’t just drive the electric version.

    PALM SPRINGS, California – “You want it to go one way… But it’s the other way.” I thought of Marlo Stanfield’s words from… The wire that morning. As much as I’d like to, I couldn’t just come to Palm Springs and drive the new BMW i7 without at least acknowledging that for many the time hasn’t come yet. As much as I – or you – would like everyone to go electric, now, that doesn’t happen and won’t happen; not immediately.

    Elsewhere on Ars, you can read our first look at that electric i7. Spoiler alert: pretty damn good. But most new 7-series won’t be i7s; many will still be ICE sevens. And recognizing the world as it is, and not the world as I would like it to be, meant taking a ride in one of the gas burners.

    Since the main attraction of internal combustion in 2023 is taking very long drives without charging stops, I decided to go for a long drive in a $113,600 760i xDrive. Coincidentally, BMW got permission to film and take photos in Joshua Tree National Park. The opportunity to do that doesn’t come along very often, and I hadn’t been to that park before, so the plan seemed clear to me.

    We're just accepting the inherent superiority of electric powertrains because they're quiet and efficient, so it's hard to accept that aging motors offer some benefits for some applications. The easiest way to identify one is by the presence of exhaust pipes.
    enlarge / We’re just accepting the inherent superiority of electric powertrains because they’re quiet and efficient, so it’s hard to accept that aging motors offer some benefits for some applications. The easiest way to identify one is by the presence of exhaust pipes.

    Jonathan Gitlin

    The 760i is one of two gasoline-powered 7-series on sale now. It boasts a new turbocharged 4.4-liter V8 that generates 536 horsepower (400 kW) and 750 Nm (550 lb-ft) – almost identical in power and torque to the electric i7. Like the i7, the 760i is four-wheel drive, but in this case via an eight-speed gearbox. There’s a more advanced implementation of the 48V stopper starter—perhaps it’s time we stopped calling these “mild hybrids”—that improves efficiency, and a host of mechanical upgrades in the engine bay that combine to make for BMW to get V12 performance from a V8 instead.

    Even a smart modern V8 like the 760i cannot compete with an electric powertrain in terms of speed. Press the accelerator pedal in this car – a pedal that, in this case, slows the passage of air to the engine rather than current through a circuit – and it takes time for air to pass through the intakes, it takes time for the turbochargers to to scroll up, and it takes time for the pistons to go up and down, up and down.

    Instead of the wiring and orange wiring you'd expect in an i7, the V8 engine looks like when you open the hood of a 760i.
    enlarge / Instead of the wiring and orange wiring you’d expect in an i7, the V8 engine looks like when you open the hood of a 760i.

    BMW

    So there is a very short but still perceptible lag or lag from pedal input to torque delivery compared to the electric car. It’s all less refined than the smooth and near-silent work of one of BMW’s electric-powered synchronous motors, but those are the compromises some are willing to make, with fueling speed taking precedence over luxury efficiency.

    Still, BMW’s hard-working engineers have made up for the internal combustion engine’s inadequacy by dampening the unpleasant noise, vibration and harshness of the drivetrain as much as possible. The sound coming through the sound-isolated interior is a pleasant but respectfully muffled V8 grunt that will likely be drowned out when listening to music.