Watch BMW’s All-Electric, Off-Roading ‘Dune Taxi’ Make Mincemeat of the Arabian Desert

BMW’s latest 4×4 could easily steal the show in the next Mad Max film.

The German automaker has just unveiled an all-electric, off-roading prototype called the Dune Taxi. The over-the-top bruiser isn’t just for show, either. BMW actually built a working version of the vehicle.

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The EV is the star of a new short film the automaker’s Middle East division posted on YouTube earlier this week. In the clip, the mysterious Dune Taxi—which is driven by rally racer Abdo Feghali with navigation assistance from Outer Banks star Madelyne Clyne—races a pair of X6 Competition SUVs on and off the roads surrounding the Liwa oasis in Abu Dhabi. The X6 Competitions, which are driven by the Red Bull Driftbrothers, are able to keep up for much of the video, but eventually, the Dune Taxi shoots off on its own, leaving them in the dust.

There’s some really amazing driving on display in the clip, especially if you’re a fan of desert racing. The real highlight comes in its closing stages, though. That’s when Feghali and Clyne decide to take the battery-powered beast straight up the Tal Moreeb, a 984-foot-tall sand dune with a 50-degree incline—and it makes it with relative ease. The 4×4 isn’t the first to top the dune, but, as countless YouTube videos make clear, it’s no easy feat.

The fact that it can conquer the Tal Moreeb is one of the precious few things we know about the Dune Taxi right now. The video is excruciatingly short on details about the EV, although it does state that it has a powertrain that can generate 536 horses and 737 ft lbs of twist and is equipped with a suspension with 16 inches of travel. Its body—which is made from Natural Fibre Reinforced Polymer, a plant-based material similar to carbon fiber—bears a remarkable resemblance to the Odyssey 21, a desert racer that competes in Extreme E, points out Jalopnik.

Is this BMW’s way of saying it’s ready to start competing in the racing series? We certainly hope so.

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