OK, the photos above aren't of the real thing, they're of the camouflaged development mule, but they are official, and they've been released along with technical details of BMW's second i-car, the much-hyped i8 plug-in sports coupé, due to debut at the Frankfurt motor show in September alongside its pure-electric i3 citycar sibling.
And the nuts and bolts - shown in the second to fifth pictures in our gallery - are pretty impressive by any standards. They start with an all-new 170kW turbocharged 1.5-litre three-cylinder petrol engine (which is made specially for this car in the UK) driving the rear axle through a six-speed auto transmission.
Then there's a 95kW electric motor driving the front wheels via an integrated two-stage auto transmission, giving the i8 a combined total of 265kW and 570Nm with all-wheel drive as a bonus.
That'll launch it from 0-100 in less than 4.5 seconds, according to BMW, and on to an electronically limited 250km/h - at an average cost, it claims, of less than 2.5 litres per 100km and 59g/km of CO2 on the EU test cycle for plug-in hybrid vehicles.
The i8 can be driven as a straight mid-engined petrol car, a front wheel-drive pure electric or any combination of the two.
The electric motor is fed by a lithium-ion battery with enough capacity for 35km of gentle all-electric driving, after which it will need to be driven further on petrol or absorb amps from a 220V domestic outlet for about 3½ hours.
Using both petrol and electric power, the i8 is good for about 500km in Comfort mode, or up to 600 in severely-curtailed Eco Pro mode.
All of which is packaged within a carbon-fibre box, which BMW calls a Life Module, with aluminium front and rear sub-frames and carbon-fibre 'butterfly' doors.
With carbon-fibre-reinforced plastic body panels in place, the i8 is 4689mm long, 1942mm wide and 1293mm high, on a 2800 wheelbase and weighs 1490kg ready to go - only 23kg more than the new Porsche 911 Carrera 4S which the Blue Propeller Guys chose as a development benchmark.
NEUTRAL HANDLING
Sure, the 295kW Porsche is two tenths of a second quicker to 100km/h and tops out at nearly 300 - but it slurps more than nine litres of unleaded per 100km and coughs out 215g/km of CO2 on the conventional EU test cycle.
By placing both prime movers as close to their respective axles as possible and the lithium-ion cells along the centre floor of the cabin where the transmission tunnel would be in a conventional sports-car, BMW has given the i8 a very low centre of and near-perfect 50:50 weight distribution.
Its neutral handling is backed up by every conceivable electronic driver aid, included a traction control function with a push-button 'Sport' setting that will allow some controlled wheelspin under acceleration, and even a bit of drifting in corners, just so the geek who paid a fortune for this computerised magic carpet can make believe he's actually in control.