New ad for BMW-330e hybrid EV touts a battery only range of...wait, that can't be right

Now for something completely different:

BMW has always made good cars.  German engineering is among the best in the world.

So when I saw a TV ad for the new BMW-330e "plug-in hybrid EV" this evening, I wanted to see if German engineers had a better approach than every other country's engineers.

Near the end of the ad, a graphic said "Range on battery..."

And I thought it said "22 miles."  But I thought I must have read it wrong, cuz why would any car maker advertise a range of...22 miles?  It didn't make sense.

But replay confirmed the ad indeed said... 22 miles.

So I looked up the specs.  Turns out the hybrid weighs 4,083 pounds.  That seemed unusually high for such a small car, so I checked the gasoline-only version, which weighs 3,530 pounds.

Think about that for a second: In a rational world no engineer would ever consider adding 550 pounds of extra weight to get a measly 22 miles of range on battery.  It makes zero sense.

Oh wait...that's right: Today every western company is going insane to show how much it wants to be seen as "fighting Globull Worming."  So to engineers this makes no sense, but to the marketing types it checks a desired square that says "We have an *electric car,* which means we support the fight against Globull Worming."

Wow.  Have we reached "peak stupidity" yet?