The magazine Wallpaper has a fascinating interview with BMW Design boss Adrian Van Hooydonk about the new Megacity program. The article is generally high level but gives us a few tantalizing details we hadn ‘t heard before. Here ‘s an excerpt:

>Lightness was one of the essential characteristics of the MCV, in order to counter the 100kg added by the battery. Ulich Kranz, Project-I director explains that even this figure doesn ‘t quite tell the whole story. ‘Or at least it only relates to the passenger cell, ‘ he notes. ‘The additional weight of a conversion vehicle is closer to 350kg. We managed to compensate this through a combination of lightweight design measures, such as the use of mainly aluminium for the Drive module, while the Life module – the passenger cell – is largely made of carbon fibre composite. In total, we have managed to fully offset the calculated weight premium. ‘

>Benoît Jacob, a BMW in-house designer who previously worked on the M1 sports coupe and CS coupe concepts, will head the new design team for the sub-brand. BMW refuses to reveal future models – or even a brand name – but Van Hooydonk admits it would be relatively straightforward to create derivatives based on the architecture it has established, so expect slightly more niche, upscale variants to roll out before the end of the next decade.

We ‘re not entirely sure what they mean by “M1 ” but it ‘s interesting to note that Mr. Jacob is the thought leader behind the recent CS concepts.

(Update: M1 was referring to the Homage concept car. Chalk the confusion up to 1M fever)