[imagesource: Ray Demski]

In South Africa, finding yourself in the same lane as a BMW is usually the motivation that you need to seek out a different route to your destination.

The cars featured prominently in the Kyalami sword fight video that was doing the rounds.

Then there’s that incident in the Western Cape earlier this year, where a couple, driving a BMW without a licence, flipped the bird at a traffic camera.

To get a familiar dig in, BMW drivers – it’s the 99% that give the other 1% a bad name.

Now, the company is taking to the skies.

The German marque recently sent air sports pioneer Peter Salzmann soaring at speeds of up to 300km/h in a newly developed electric wingsuit.

Per Robb Report, the project was a joint effort between BMW, Designworks, and Salzmann, who has been thinking of ways to improve performance in the air.

“One of them was a supporting motor—and it’s an idea I just couldn’t shake,” Salzmann told BMW. “I found the idea of being able to jump from my local mountain wearing the wingsuit and land in my garden fascinating.”

After three years of extensive research, and many test flights in a horizontal wind tunnel, Salzmann and the wingsuit completed their first flight over the mountains of Austria last week:

The electric wingsuit enabled Salzmann to accelerate faster than normal wingsuit-wearing skydivers, who usually ‘only’ reach speeds of around 100km/h.

The e-wingsuit is built upon BMW i EV technology and powered by a chest-mounted rig. It offers 15 kW of grunt that’s split between two 7.5 kW carbon impellers. The impellers spin at a speed of 25,000 rpm and produce thrust for up to five minutes. The aim of the electric wingsuit is to increase performance and eventually allow for longer distances to be covered.

While the flight was a resounding success, Salzmann says that he wants to take things a step further.

According to BMW, the daredevil wants to fly between the skyscrapers of South Korea next.

“I will have to train more,” the Austrian adds. “We will optimize the technique and look ahead boldly.”

It’s cool, I’ll give it that.

[source:robbreport]