When a film about a BMW Dune Taxi hit YouTube earlier this week, it looked like Munich was dropping a big hint that it was about to enter the Extreme E electric off-road championship.

Though the Dune Taxi features BMW’s trademark kidney grilles, the vehicle is clearly based on the Odyssey 21, the all-wheel drive electric racer built by Spark Racing Technology and supplied to every competing Extreme E team. Grille aside, the styling is essentially the same, and text overlaid on the video confirms that the body is made from natural fiber reinforced polymer, offers 400 mm (15.8-inches) of wheel travel and sends 400 kW (536 hp / 544 PS) and 1000 Nm (738 lb-ft) of torque to its four wheels. That spec tallies perfectly with published data about the Odyssey 21.

But we reached out to BMW Group Middle East who told us that the Dune Taxi is “a one-off project without any racing implications and there are no plans in place to re-enter any electrified racing formats.”

BMW’s Osama El Sherif told us that the sand beast is based on an Extreme E car, but exists purely for entertainment and promotional purposes. It was built by Spark Racing Technology, and has the same mechanical spec as the cars racing in the championship, but the design came out of BMW Group Designworks.

Related: McLaren Reveals Electric SUV Racer For Extreme E, Announces Emma Gilmour As Their Second Driver

“The Dune Taxi symbolizes BMW’s ambition to challenge the status quo,” El Sherif told us via email. “That also goes for the BMW X, i and M cars on and off the road. Whatever the Dune Taxi can do in extreme conditions, the BMW X6 M, the BMW iX M60 and ultimately the upcoming BMW XM can do every day on tarmac, gravel, sand or snow.”

It’s disappointing to discover BMW isn’t about to launch into Extreme E, but full marks to BMW Middle East for creating a fun and very original bit of content.

Original story follows below

Thought the BMW XM was wild? Wait until you get a load of BMW’s Dune Taxi, which mysteriously dropped this morning in a video on the YouTube channel of BMW Middle East.

The Dune Taxi is an all-electric off-roader that looks suspiciously like an Extreme E racer, and clearly isn’t earmarked for production. So it might simply be a promotional tool for BMW’s real xDrive SUVs that it meets during the course of the video, including the X6M, iX and, at the very end, and in a static appearance only, the Concept XM.

Or more likely BMW is dropping a big hint that it plans to enter the Extreme E off-road championship. Strangely, BMW hasn’t released any details about the Dune Taxi’s intentions. We’ve reached out to the company to find out more and are waiting to hear back.

Until that happens, all we’ve got to go on is what we can see by looking at the Dune Taxi and the few technical details that flash up on the screen during the film. We can see, for example, that it has two gullwing doors, a low-profile roof snorkel, and slim LED lights. The fastback shape gives the profile the look of a sportier X6, but the raised fenders and low bonnet line look more like something you’d see on a supercar. A look at the current crop of Extreme E racers, which all use the same running gear and and only slightly different bodywork, shows that the Dune Taxi is almost identical.

Related: Production 2023 BMW XM Revealed In New Patent Photos With Subtle Design Changes

Glimpses of the interior show a sturdy roll cage and a Cosworth logo mounted low down on the center console – Cosworth says its electronics feature prominently in the Odyssey 21, the official name for the Extreme E series racers. Text overlays add a little more info, explaining that “Dune Taxi Electric Prototype” is fitted with a natural fiber reinforced polymer body, offers 400 mm (15.8-inches) of wheel travel, and sends 400 kW (536 hp / 544 PS) and 1000 Nm (738 lb-ft) of torque to all four wheels. Again, that power figure also matches the spec of current Extreme E cars.

Judging by the way the Dune Taxi slides through traffic with rally ace Abdo Feghali at the wheel, having first stopped to pick up TV’s Outer Banks’ star, Madelyn Cline, that power setup looks to be heavily rear-biased. And in one section where we see it performing a triple-car drift around a roundabout alongside a pair of X6 Ms driven by Red Bull’s Driftbrothers, it’s clear that the prototype’s suspension is far softer, judging from the massive lean angles.

The video closes with the XM ascending the monster 130-degree Tal Moreeb sand dune near Liwa, before Cline exits and walks over to the Concept XM, whose production car brother is set to be unveiled on September 27. We’ll update this story when BMW has got back to us with more info.

Would you like to see BMW contest Extreme E? Leave a comment and let us know.