Born Electric Guest Blogger: Meet Harold From California

My name is Harold and I was born electric on August 19^th, 2014. 

There are two parts to my story here. The first is about my path to selecting and buying the i3, and the second is about my experiences owning and driving the i3.

PART 1:  

“IF YOU’RE NOT PART OF THE SOLUTION, THEN YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM.”

When it comes to global warming, I’m embarrassed to say that for far too long my wife and I were part of the problem.  We’re a two car family, and over the years we’ve driven a series of big, luxury, premium fuel guzzlers. As recently as 2007 we each had one of the full-size Range Rovers. Yikes, and yuck!

I gradually realized this was not tenable, but I found it very, very hard to give up the comfort (I’m 6’3 and don’t fit in most cars) and sportiness of a big luxury SUV. The very thought of shoehorning myself into the ugly and painfully boring Prius hybrid was enough to make me puke.

So my first tentative step in the right direction was to sign up to make annual contributions to one of those carbon-offset charities. I even got vanity license plates that said “I OFFSET.” Wow, how big and how brave of me!

Then BMW came out with a diesel version of their X5 so I dumped my Range Rover in favor of that on the theory that at least I would be burning a lot less fuel. As nice a car as the X5 was, it ended up only getting about 16mpg, and I also came to understand that the diesel wasn’t as clean as I had thought it might be.

Meanwhile, there were more hybrid cars coming on the market, but all still seemed to frumpy for me.  I’m sorry, but I live in California and I spend a ton of time in my car and I want it to look and feel great!

And then Audi launched their stylish little Q5, and I dumped the X5 in favor of this smaller, more fuel efficient vehicle. But even that only got around 20mpg. 

So about a year ago I started the search for my next car. I did my first exploration of EV’s. The RAV4 was too clearly a Toyota. The Leaf, which a neighbor of mine happily drives, drove like a turtle to me.  The Volt was claustrophobic – and a Chevy to boot. The Tesla was way cool, but I actually don’t fit very well in it and, at least in the San Francisco area, driving one has already become interpreted as a sign that you are an obnoxious snob.

So, I had resigned myself to getting the new edition of the X5 diesel, which promised to deliver significantly better – and cleaner – mileage than the original one. And then one day while I was checking out the new X5 on one of the BMW forums, I saw something about the coming of the i3. It looked weird as hell in the photo, but it sounded intriguing. I started to follow stories about it. 

I went to a car show in San Jose to see it in person. I fully expected to discover that I could not fit in it, but when I sat down in the model on display I discovered that it had more head room and leg room and better visibility than my Q5. (Of course at this point, BMW was showing it with a sunroof – more about that later….). Plus, the interior design was stunning. And the exterior, while weird, was weird in a sexy way.  So I was hooked.

When the test drives started happening in the Bay Area, I went to them at three different dealers.  Driving the car was a total blast (all the more so with the sunroof open…..) and I had to have one. I went to my dealer and said I’m willing to pay MSRP for one of the first ones you get, I just need to get two key options – the sun roof and the REX. Can you arrange that please?

And then things started to fall apart. For one, it turned out the sunroof was not going to be offered in the US.  No reason for this has ever been provided, but that alone was enough to put me off.  I’m claustrophobic, and I always felt I needed a sunroof to have the feeling of openness they give. And then some negative stories started to appear about the REX – a review in Europe said driving with the REX was like driving in limp-home mode, and then it was revealed that the REX was being modified in the US in ways that made it seem even less desirable.  And,  being new to EV’s, I was at that point too chicken to go the full BEV route.

So, I abandoned my quest for an i3. I signed off of the i3 forums and facebook group. I went back to my dealer and started haggling over prices on the X5 diesel again. But the x5 diesel remained in hot demand,  and I couldn’t get what I thought was a reasonable price. And then the i3’s actually arrived. I saw two in one day “in the wild.” I went behind my dealer’s back and went to another dealer to test drive an i3 again.  I found that even without the sunroof it still felt very open. And it was just as fun to drive as I had remembered. 

So I went back to my CA, said you’re not going to believe this, but I want the i3 after all. He laughed very heartily. We worked the numbers for a while. I ended up doing the two year version of “owner’s choice.” (Went with owner’s choice vs. lease to get the full advantage of the federal tax credit,  and went two years rather than three just because I expect the EV technology is going to advance pretty rapidly over the next couple of years and I may want to move to the next edition sooner rather than later.) And within just a few weeks I was driving my new Andesite Silver Terra i3, loaded up with everything except for the 20” wheels.  And, surprise surprise, I even got over my fear of running out of juice and went with the BEV instead of the REX.

PART 2: 

“WHO SAYS MEDICINE HAS TO TASTE BAD TO BE GOOD FOR YOU?

As I mentioned earlier, a key factor that kept me from switching sooner to a more environmentally correct car was that they all just seemed too ugly, too uncomfortable, and too boring. I wanted to do the right thing for the planet – but I wanted to still be able to enjoy driving at the same time.

Thankfully, my i3 has solved all three of those problems for me. 

While I will admit that the exterior is a bit of an acquired taste, there can be no denying that the interior is stunning. Yes, the materials are all very environmentally friendly, but more important to me – they are gorgeous. The design is very fresh,  very high tech,  and yet very simple. Among the features I like most are the floating high definition screens (one for the instrument cluster stuff, one for the navigation and multimedia stuff) and the eucalyptus dash. I also really appreciate the openness of the cabin and the great sight lines.

The interior is also quite comfortable. I was initially skeptical about the thinness of the seats.  As a veteran business road warrior, I have equated the steady thinning down of airline seats over the years with an equally steady decline in the comfort of those seats. Well, I can only hope that the designers at Boeing and Airbus get to drive an i3 soon so they can see how to make a thinner seat super supportive and comfortable.

And as for the driving experience, well, I haven’t had so much fun driving a car since the very first one I owned.  First comes the peppiness. As the folks at BMW are fond of saying,  the i3 is the fastest car they make from 0 to 30 mph.  And I believe them now!  Zipping in and out of city traffic is as easy as can be – aided by how tight the turning radius is. Likewise, accelerating on to freeway ramps and passing at freeway speeds is also quick and easy. When we had a meet up of Bay area i3 drivers recently,  I had t-shirts printed up for everyone that carried this message: “I drive a BMW i3.  So you can eat my dust, not my exhaust. You’re welcome.” Trust me, the message is appropriate: this car hauls ass.

It's hard to see in the picture, but the blue T-Shirts everyone is wearing are the shirts Harold made up for the Crissy Field i3 meet. He was even gracious enough to send me a couple in the mail. Photo credit: Dino Ignacio

The steering is also very tight. I’m sure it has some degree of electronic assistance, but it doesn’t feel in the least bit mushy or vague. If anything it’s too responsive – you have to be attentive or it’s a bit too easy to oversteer.

The ride is firm, but in a good, BMW way. If you don’t want to feel the road at all, then this is not the car for you. But if you like to get some feedback from your driving, you should like this.

I really like the quietness of the car. If you keep the windows rolled up, it is super quiet; there is of course some wind noise at higher speeds, but I have not found it to be objectionable. And, at the same time, if you drive with the windows open, you can actually hear the sounds of nature!

I’m still learning all the fancy new tech tools.  Love the Harman Kardon stereo, love being able to use apps like Pandora and TuneIn. Appreciate that iDrive has gotten clearer and more manageable, though it still requires a learning curve. Love the collision avoidance system and the adaptive cruise control.  Haven’t yet tried the self-parking thing – but haven’t felt the need either, as this is the smallest car I have driven in ages and I would feel like a total wimp if I couldn’t park it by myself.  : )

As for downsides of the i3, anyone who buys this car has to accept that they are on the bleeding edge of technology and that things may go wrong. And they have for some of the early owners. But, knock on wood, after just about 1,000 miles, the worst thing that has happened to me so far is that one morning while I was driving along a nearly empty six lane freeway a warning message popped up on my screen that said something about “Danger – objects detected in roadway.” There were no objects to be seen, so I ignored the message and kept on driving and the message ultimately disappeared.

Also, if you choose as I did to go with the BEV instead of the REx, you will probably find yourself being more than a little bit paranoid about monitoring how much charge you have left. I have been running somewhere around 75 miles per full charge – a little less than what the EPA says, but then I drive with a bit of a lead foot and I leave the AC on all the time. So far I’ve only once gotten the dreaded verbal warning “you have 15 miles of range left,” and thankfully that happened when I was only about a mile from my house.

One other downside is that, to my way of thinking, the i3 is not practical as a family car. The “suicide”  doors (aka coach doors) make access to the back seat just too awkward for regular use, especially if you are trying to cope with child seats.

OK, so the i3 is good looking, it’s comfortable, and it’s fun to drive. But how does it do on my original overall reason for getting it, which is to help address the problem of global warming?

Well,  for one thing I have not been to a gas station since I got the car. And will never have to go to a gas station with it. Take that, Exxon and BP and the rest of you big oil companies! (The vanity plates I have on order for my car will read: “I86DGAS”) And, at least according to the i3 mobile app, so far I have already saved 530 pounds of CO2 from being pumped out into the air.

So,  in sum, thank you BMW for giving birth to the i3 so that I can at last do my part for solving global warming – but do it in a way that fits my own selfish needs for style, comfort, and fun!

PS- The i3 may not be right for everyone, but there are now plenty of EV’s on the market – surely one of them will be right for you!
_________________________________________________________




Thanks for participating Harold! If you drive an i3 and want to share your Born Electric story here, just send me an email and we'll set it up! tom.moloughney@gmail.com

The Norby's "Driving to Net Zero Energy Challenge" Starts off Strong!

My i3 is powered by electricity generated by my home solar array. EV+PV is really a fantastic combination and one that I believe will be fairly common in the near future.  So how can you possibly top that? How about by getting two i3s and powering both of them plus your entire household's energy use by your  solar array! That's exactly what the Norby's are attempting to do.

I have frequently written on my blogs how one of the best part of being in BMW's e-mobility test program for the past five years has been meeting and interacting with many of the other people in the program. Together we learned how to live with the issues that test cars frequently have, we built up our own support network and we simultaneously realized how fantastic driving electric was. It was a really a great experience and one that was nothing short of life changing for many of us. 

While I've literally made hundreds of acquaintances in the program, there are a few people who I've really connected with and now consider friends, and one of them is Peder Norby. Peder and his wife Julie live in Carlsbad, California and went from MINI-E to ActiveE to BMW i3, just like I did, only they went one step further and got two i3s! Like me, the Norby's power their electric cars with clean energy from their rooftop solar array. However even though our systems are about the same size, their array provides about 1/3 more energy than mine does because of the location (sunny Southern California) and orientation of the arrays. 

This year, Peder and Julie began a year-long net-zero energy challenge. They are attempting to live the entire year with their solar array providing all the energy they need to power their home and both of their cars. I believe this is a fantastic story and a glimpse into what the future has in store. Peder has been updating the progress on his i3 blog but now that he is one quarter of the way through the year, I asked him for permission to post his progress here and he happily agreed.  Below is a little introduction to what the Norby's are doing followed by the three month update. 

It’s hard to get this down to a sentence or two, but when we built our home in 2005,  our ethos was to partner with nature, harvesting the gifts of nature, building the most efficient home possible.

In doing this, we wanted to elevate, we refused to compromise or lower the enjoyment of our life and the caliber of our dwelling, we refused to reduce our life to living in a small cave with one solitary light bulb, solely for the sake of efficiency.

Our desire was to express ourselves artistically, with the highest quality materials, design and comfort in the size home needed to accommodate our family and friends, while partnering with nature, being as efficient as possible. We wanted to live in a net zero energy home, harvesting food and drink from our land. Not big or small, not right or wrong,  just our home.

The idea is a simple one: Harvest sunshine from the roof of your home to provide 100% of the power needed for your home and the two cars in the garage. That is our goal in this "Driving to Net Zero Challenge.

 

The 12 month documented journey began May 15, 2014. Three months in, things are looking pretty good:

Update Month Three. We're killing it!

The idea is a simple one, harvest endless sunshine from a small portion of a roof to provide 100% of the energy needed to power a home and two cars with zero utility cost, and zero gasoline cost.

Summary:

• 1/4 of the way through the year,  -167 kWh and a $468 credit.
• Stats, Stats, Graphs, Graphs. 
• We're killing it! Ready to make a projection!
• Our French import.

We estimate that we will be -$800 by Oct/Nov

Solar PV production holding steady at 1326 kWh

Electricity use for the two BMW i3's rose to 478 kWh for the month

We have a credit of $315 for the first seven months of the year

1/4 of the way into our "Driving to Net Zero Energy" challenge and as they say in political election coverage:
"I am ready to make a projection and call this race"

We will be below zero in utility cost and gasoline cost providing the energy for our home and guest house, and the two cars in the garage driven a total of 24,000 miles a year.  In fact we are so far ahead we will accomplish this goal four months earlier than planed with the January 2015 true-up bill from our utility. 

Our natural gas cost for a year is $301.27

We estimate at the true-up bill that we will have a credit of $400 to $450 for our electrical use and a cost of natural gas of $301 for the year thus  -$100 to -$150 in total energy cost for the year.

How about total cost?

As I mentioned in my first post in May, an asterisk is required regarding the cost of energy as our utility does not let us carry over our electricity credit to our natural gas cost.  Essentially our valuable peak hour electricity that we do not consume will be a gift to our utility.  As the years go by we will most likely convert one or two of the natural gas appliances at the end of their useful life to electric in order to reduce the natural gas bill by using our excess electricity credit.

Where are we with energy usage and gasoline cost now compared to 2007 when we began this path to energy independence?

In 2007 our energy cost were:

$3,800 a year in electricity
$   300 a year in natural gas

$2,800 a year for Julie's Infinity G35 gasoline

$2,400 a year for my Volvo S60R gasoline

Total:    $9300 a year in energy cost.  ($792 per month)

This is not far off the statistical norm for a US family which uses an average of 11,000 kWh per year ($3,060 at SDG&E rates) and $2912 for gasoline according to the 2012 EPA statistics.

In 2014 our energy cost are:

$      0 a year in electricity*

$  300 a year in natural gas

$      0 a year in fuel cost for Julie's BMW i3

$      0 a year in fuel cost for my BMW i3

Total $300 a year in energy cost. ($25 per month) 

* we donate $450 worth of electricity back to SDG&E.

You can see how quickly that $9000 a year in energy cost savings will pay off a $30K Solar PV system, $15k in extra construction cost for a thick well insulated home, efficient appliances and led lights and $1000 for a EV charging station in the garage.  We have calculated from the installation in January of 2007 we reached the payoff point in April of 2012.

From April 2012 and for the next few decades, we will have essentially zero or de minimus cost for energy saving us $200k to 300K in energy cost with escalating utility and gasoline cost.

How about total usage?

Julie and I live normal lives, things come up and situations change. The interesting part of our Drive To Net Zero Energy challenge is that we are real people with a real life and not some demonstration house with nobody living in it.

We have been doing really great using a net total of -167 kWh of electricity (generation vs consumption) for the first three months of the challenge. We can extrapolate the prior four months of usage pre i'3s, assuming we had the efficient BMW i3's and the extra 1kw of solar pv production which would have saved us 225 kWh per month. We estimate that by May of next year we will be very close to a net of 0 total kWh used, +- 250 kWh per year which is a normal usage and weather variable.

The French Import.

I bet you thought it was a car :)

Julie and I have decided to make an impact on two young adults lives.  We are hosting through Rotary Youth Exchange, a 17 year old French student named Peroline for a one year exchange. By doing so, an American young man is traveling to France to begin his year as an exchange student in France living with Peroline's family.

Our household has now risen to four and the extra electricity that our 17 year old exchange student will use will most likely push us into the positive use territory.

Hosting a 17 year old young lady French exchange student for a year was not contemplated and is not a very good idea for the Drive To Net Zero Energy Challenge!

But life is life, unpredictable, wonderful and real.  We are very happy to have Peroline as part of our family for the next year and we're looking forward to driving her everywhere, using lots of electrons, to see the sights of our great nation.

Our goal remains Net Zero Energy usage as well as Net Zero Energy cost.
We'll see how the the next 3/4 of the year goes.

Imagine a better future and your participation in it.

Next Month:

• Charging stations and what's on the horizon.
• Our CHG emissions 
• Our version of GHG offsets

Thanks for reading and commenting.

(Past "Driving To Net Zero" articles on Peder's blog)

Energy Challenge Introductory Article

Mid Month Article: The Energy Grid

Update Month 1

Mid Month Article: Does your Gas Station Pay you to fill'er up?

Update Month 2

Bonus video:
Below is one part of a series of videos that Peder and I participated in. The video series is called "Wherever You Want to Go" and was produced by BMW back in 2011. BMW recruited Buzz Aldrin, Marissa Meyer, Robin Chase, Syd Mead, and many others to participate and Peder, Todd Crook and I were also chosen to because of our high level of participation in BMW's e-mobility program. The four-part series is available online and did a good job of opening the up a conversation about where we are going with regards to personal mobility. Take a look and see if you can spot Peder and me.  :)

 

Guest Post: Efficiency or Range? You Can’t Have Both.

The i3 is the most efficient production car available today

Every now and then I have a reader send me an article they wrote and ask if I'd like to post it here. Usually it's not exactly what I'm looking for and politely explain why I won't be posting it and thank them for sending it nonetheless.  Occasionally I'll get something interesting though, like the post below which was sent to me by Robert Kasper. I think it's particularly timely since just last week I posted the Tesla/BMW comparison piece and I think this is an interesting follow up to it.  I hope you enjoy:                    

  Efficiency or Range?  You Can’t Have Both.

…But Advanced Technology Can Help.

By Rob Kasper

In the world of electric vehicles, whether Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) or Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs), there is a clear trade off between range and efficiency.  For a given technology, efficiency suffers as range increases due to the weight of not only additional battery capacity, but the increased structure and volume to haul that capacity around.  Now that there are a significant number of plug-in vehicles being manufactured, and a recognized standard to test them, we can identify trends.  Consider Table 1 and Figure 1, a plot of efficiency (as measured in EPA MPGe) vs. range in miles for 2014 plug-in electric vehicles measured by the EPA.  They are grouped into Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles, and further identified as either conventional or advanced technology design and construction.  Conventional technology is generally characterized by a manufacturer’s use of an existing gasoline powered platform modified for battery electric drive, steel frame construction and cladding, and standard battery technology.  Advanced technology is generally characterized by a clean sheet, purpose built EV design, extensive use of aluminum or aluminum plus Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic (CFRP) for weight savings, higher energy density lithium ion battery packs, with the bonus of performance equivalent to or exceeding the best of conventional technology plug-in vehicles.

Figure 1: Efficiency vs. Range

Table 1: EPA Electric Range and MPGe

Beyond the obvious observation that the price of greater range is lower efficiency within a given technology, it is important to note the significance of advancing technology.  The ground-up EV design, significantly lighter weight construction, and advanced battery technology of the BMW i3 and Tesla Model S push the blue trend line significantly up and to the right of conventional BEVs’ green trend line.  As significant is the single data point (in purple) representing the only advanced technology PHEV currently available – The BMW i3 REx.  Not only is it capable of greater efficiency and far more range than any conventional PHEV (the red trend line), it is more efficient than all but two conventional BEVs, with only slightly less range than all but the most inefficient conventional BEVs.

It is this outlier of a data point, the BMW i3 REx that might best help illustrate why a smart means of increasing the range of an EV may not necessarily be to add more battery capacity.   Battery energy is clean and well suited for powering vehicles for relatively short-range transportation but due to its weight and lengthy charge times, inefficient and inconvenient for long distances.   On the other hand, the benefits of energy density and convenience make gasoline/diesel energy better suited for longer range transportation with the trade-off being greater well to wheel emissions in many parts of the world.  In the case of the BMW i3 REx, each mile of range requires either 0.15 pounds of gasoline, or 5.7 pounds of battery capacity.  At 37 times the mass specific energy density of battery power, very little gasoline is required to extend range for a given tank size, and that tank can be replenished in minutes nearly anywhere in the well developed fossil fuel infrastructure that currently exists worldwide.  This capability requires a 265 pound increase in the weight3 of the vehicle for the REx engine and associated systems, which imposes a 6% decrease in efficiency, but once set, that efficiency does not appreciably decrease as more energy in the form of gasoline is added to increase range.  Increasing battery capacity cannot increase range as efficiently, as not only must the weight of the battery increase by 37 times the weight of gasoline per mile in the first increment, but by the weight of increased structure and volume, as well as even greater battery capacity to offset the reduction in efficiency resulting from the weight increase.  There comes a point where the sacrifice in efficiency may no longer be worth the additional range to be gained.
See figure 2:

Figure 2: EV Energy Storage (and Generation) Weight vs Range for Advanced Technology EVs

1- EPA testing protocol does not account for approximately 4 miles of range remaining after REx fuel exhaustion when publishing a 72 mile battery powered electric range before REx activation, but does account for it in the total range calculation of 150 miles:  72 electric miles + 1.9 gal x 39 mpg + 4 electric miles = 150 EPA range (76 electric + 74 gasoline).  76 miles of range is also the result of dividing the EPA measured total i3 wall to wheel consumption of 22.0 kWh by the i3 REx EPA measured consumption rate of 0.288 kWh/mile.  This value is further corroborated by the CARB BEVx designation awarded to the i3 REx which requires the electric range not only be at least 75 miles, but that it must exceed the gasoline range, neither of which would be possible without accounting for the ~4 miles of range remaining after REx fuel exhaustion.

2- The EPA’s 95 MPGe rating of the Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid includes 0.2 gallons of gasoline operation plus 29 kWh of electric operation per 100 miles.  Subtracting the 10 mile of gasoline operation contribution to the total (0.2 gal X 50 mpg) yields 29 kWh per 90 miles, or 32.2 kWh per 100 miles, which results in 105 MPGe for electric only operation. (MPGe = 33,705 divided by watt hours per mile.)

3- While EPA rated at 87 miles of range in its base form, purchasers of the Mercedes-Benz B-Class can choose to pay an additional $600 for the Range Package, which makes an additional 17 miles of range available.  There is no difference in total battery capacity between the two configurations, only the percentage of SOC made available to the driver.

4- The 8 BMW battery pack modules weigh 55 lbs. each, for a total of 440 lbs.  Reference page 17 of the BMW i3 Service Managers Workshop Participant Guide at http://darrenortiz.com/website_pdfs/BMWi3PG.pdf.

5- 265 lbs for the REx engine and all associated equipment is the difference in weight between the i3 BEV and i3 REx as published on BMW’s spec pages:  http://www.bmwusa.com/Standard/Content/Vehicles/2014/i3/BMWi3/Features_and_Specs/BMWi3Specifications.aspx
http://www.bmwusa.com/Standard/Content/Vehicles/2014/i3/BMWi3RangeExtender/Features_and_Specs/BMWi3RangeExtenderSpecifications.aspx.  Adding the 440 lb. battery weight makes the total energy production and storage weight at 76 mile of range 705 lbs.  This increases by 11.4 lbs. of gasoline for every 74 miles driven beyond 76.

6- Widely quoted in other sources, Car and Driver claims the Telsa Model S 85 kWh battery pack weighs 1323 lbs: http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2013-tesla-model-s-test-review.  This is exactly 600 kg, making it appear to be an estimate, but it is the only number we have to work with, as Tesla does not publish the spec.

7- Weight of the 60 kWh Tesla Model S battery pack is estimated from the 85 kWh figure to be 60/85 X 1323 lbs. = 934 lbs.

Breaking: The i3 Rex is Indeed Tax Exempt in New Jersey After All!

My i3 REx in front of my house with my 8.775 kW solar array in view 

In a surprising turn of events, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) reversed a previous decision to exclude the i3 REx from the States Tax exemption for zero emission vehicles. This hopefully ends the nearly six month saga from the time it was originally thought the range extended version would indeed qualify, to the announcement shortly after the launch that it would not.

I actually found out a few days after I bought my car that it would not qualify, and I would have to pay $3,921.00 in sales tax. This was totally unexpected and would have actually made the range extender nearly an $8,000 option for me! As much as I love having it, I wouldn't have agreed to pay that much for it had I known the effective cost would be so high. For $3,875 I think it's fairly priced. But $7,800? No way! I even dedicated a blog post to this issue back in May when the surprising (bad) news was announced. I will say that I never actually ended up paying it all though. That's because my dealership, JMK BMW realized this was a BMW communication error and not the customers' fault. They decided they couldn't go back and charge customers so much more than they had signed contracts for and they honorably worked out a deal which made everybody happy and nobody cancelled their order. My client adviser, Manny Antunes, sold eleven i3s with range extenders so this wasn't an easy decision but the dealership decided it was better to keep the customers happy than to call them all up and tell them they now owed nearly $4,000 more for sales tax. 

However that wasn't the case with other dealerships, and I know people who bought REx cars and had indeed paid the every penny of the sales tax and didn't get any other dealership rebate or credit. They will be very happy when they open the mailbox one day soon and find a nice check in there because this decision is retroactive to May 1st, which is before any i3s were sold in the US. I was actually the first i3 REx delivery in the US, and that took place on May 21st so all i3 REx cars sold in NJ will indeed qualify for the ZEV tax exemption. 

The NJDEP Zero Emission Tax Exemption list has already been updated to include the i3 REx and can be viewed here. Let's just hope this ends the, "It's tax exempt…no it's not," saga we've had here in the Garden State.

After 2,000 Miles: The Likes

Now that I've had my i3 for nearly a month, I'm starting to get a good feel for what I like and what I don't. My initial thought was to do one post with both the likes and dislikes at this point, but after assembling the lists, I realized I wouldn't be able to spend enough time on each topic if I did it that way. Therefore I decided I'd do two consecutive posts, with one for the likes and one for the dislikes. I'm tackling the easy one first, the likes:


Adaptive Cruise Control With Stop & Go: This feature is really useful. It's kind of like locking in on the vehicle in front of you with a tractor beam and letting it pull you along. I've found it great for both low speed and high speed driving and the car will even come to a complete stop and accelerate again once the car in front of you does. The only things that aren't perfect is I've found it sometimes leaves too large of a gap in between you and the car you are chasing (for safety reasons I guess) but that allows people to easily cut in front of you if they want to. Also, some times it disengages for no apparent reason and when it does that, the car goes into full regenerative braking mode, since you don't have your foot on the accelerator. It seems to do it more in the rain and also when approaching overpasses. Both could possible confuse the camera-based system. That is not an ideal situation by any means, and something I hope BMW will address with a software update in the future. If the adaptive cruise control does disengage by itself, the car should temporally suspend the regenerative braking until the driver touches either the brake or the accelerator themselves. 

This display appears when the adaptive cruise control system automatically disengages

Seating Position: Like many things in any "likes & dislikes" list, this is highly subjective. The seating position in the i3 is very high, and really "un-sports car like". It's actually like sitting in a mini SUV. I like this position and really like the outward vision you get in the car, with lots of glass surfaces and an absolutely huge windshield. The only thing I had to get used to was that you cannot see the nose of the car at all. The hood drops off so prominently, it's impossible to see it from inside the car. After a week or two I was past that though, and feel totally comfortable with not being able to see the nose at all.

The high seating position and the abundance of glass allow for a great outward view

Charging Rate: One of the advantages of having a small battery in your electric vehicle is that it will charge quickly, provided it has a robust onboard charger. The i3 is supposed to be able to accept up to 32 amps @240V which would be about 7.7kW. I haven't seen my charge rate quite that high, but I do seem to be pulling about 6.9kW from my home EVSE. That's good enough to refill a fully discharged battery in about 3.5 hours, or give me roughly 25 miles of range per hour of charging. My ActiveE took about 5 hours to fully charge when it was new, and then when BMW lowered the charge rate due to onboard charger problems, it was taking nearly 7 hours to fully charge. My i3 charges in about half the time it was taking my ActiveE and that makes such a difference for someone like me that does a lot of driving.

Charging at home. The quick charge rate has allowed me to drive 120+ electric miles in the same day without the need of the REx a couple times already.

Cargo Space: For the past five years I've been driving BMW's beta test electric vehicles which were converted gas cars. Both vehicles had severely compromised cargo areas because they were conversions. I use my car to run errands for my restaurant and I'm frequently picking up various supplies. The hatchback cargo area of the i3, especially with the seats down is so much more useful than either the MINI-E or the ActiveE was and I'm so happy to finally have a real purpose built electric vehicle. The battery packaging doesn't interfere with any of the passenger or cargo space, as it's located directly beneath the passenger compartment in one large aluminum case. As much as I liked my previous EV's, the fact that they were indeed conversions did limit their utility.

Delivering a catering order

Picking up some supplies

The Interior: If the unconventional exterior styling has some people scratching their heads, just tell them to open the doors and take a seat inside. The interior is stunningly beautiful, with well laid out instruments and more space than a car of this size ever deserves to have. The tall body and wide stance allows the i3, which is more than a foot smaller than a 1-Series to have nearly as much interior space as a 3-Series. The huge 8.8" center instrumentation screen is amazingly clear, and somehow doesn't have a glare problem as I feared it may. The seats are comfortable and the armrest is adjustable so you can set it at the height you prefer. There is plenty of space to store stuff with huge door pockets, each that will hold two beverage bottles. There are two cup holders between the rear seats and two cup holders in the front with a slot for another optional cup holder. In all the car has up to nine beverage holders. I thought German engineers didn't understand the American obsession to hold drinks in the car?

The "Tera World" interior of my i3

The Efficiency: The i3 is the most efficient passenger car available in the US. So far, according to the data I'm compiling it's nearly 25% more efficient than my ActiveE was. That means I'm using 25% less energy that the ActiveE which was a pretty efficient EV in its own right. I actually did a blog post last week on the subject of efficiency which you can view here.

If you can curb your enthusiasm for the instant torque, the i3 can be an extremely efficient machine

Comfort Access: OK, so this isn't really anything related to it being an electric vehicle, but it's the first car I've owned with this feature. You just walk up to the car with the key in the pocket and it unlocks when you grab the handle. Then get inside and just press the start button and it turns on. When you leave you just touch the door handle in a particular spot and it locks. The only thing I don't like about this, which will definitely be mentioned in my "dislikes" post, is the extremely loud beep the car makes when you lock or unlock the doors. It's ear-piercingly loud and makes everyone in the general vicinity look your way. Update: It was pointed out to me in the BMW i3 Facebook group that you can disable the beep which I just did. For those wanting to do the same, it's in Settings>Doors/Key>Acuoustic sig.Lock/Unlock. I believe the base model (Mega World in the US) doesn't have the beep feature, but Giga and Tera Worlds do, and you can disable it there.

The Range Extender: I was on the fence for a long time trying to decide whether to get the REx or not. Once it became evident the BEV i3 wouldn't have a real 100 mile range that I could depend on, the REx really became a necessary decision. I'd prefer having a 100 mile EV and a good robust fast charge network, but that will take a few more years, at least here in the North East. For now, the range extender concept works perfectly for me. When I first got the car I purposely didn't charge it so I could fully test the REx performance and it worked even better than I imagined. I did about two hundred miles of driving in REx mode, mostly highway driving at 70 to 75 mph and it was perfectly capable of maintaining the charge. I still haven't had time to really test it by overworking it until it cannot sustain the charge, but I will. The good news is that I'll have to actually try to do that, because it is definitely robust enough to do anything I'll need it to, and that includes 230 mile trips to Vermont. I drive about 30,000 miles per year, and I'm guessing I'll do about 1,000 miles with the REx running. The one great thing about the REx is not having to think about where I'm going in order to make sure I can plug in if I need to drive a little farther than planned. I believe in the near future the range extender won't be necessary, but with where battery tech and charging infrastructure is today, I believe it makes sense for a lot of people and will certainly help with the adoption of electric vehicles.

The i3's range extender sits next to the electric motor above the rear axle.

Collision Warning: Collision Warning with Brake Priming Function is activated at speeds up to 35 mph. It  is able to respond to both moving and stationary vehicles ahead, as well as to pedestrians. If you are rapidly approaching a vehicle or pedestrian, it offers a audible warning and "primes" the brakes so they are ready for the moment you depress the brake pedal. BMW claims this allows for shorter stopping distances. What I really like though is the audible alert. I've only had it come on twice so far and in neither time did it actually prevent me from having a collision, but I could definitely see it doing just that under certain circumstances (like distracted driving). It's definitely a neat safety device and one that I hope all cars have some day.

Hill Hold: If the BMW engineers that are responsible for the hill hold on the i3 are reading this I'd like to say something: Bravo! You nailed it! Electric cars will roll freely forwards or backwards like manual transmission cars do. For the ActiveE, BMW employed the same kind of hill hold feature like they do on their conventionally-powered cars. You needed to depress the brake pedal to activate the hill hold feature, and it would release in a couple seconds. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't perfect either. The i3 won't roll backwards at all unless you put it in reverse, and you don't need to depress the brake pedal to activate the hill hold, it just does it automatically. However it will roll forward to assist in your launch, which is the way it should be. The hill hold feature doesn't time-out, and holds the vehicle as long as you need it to. This seems so natural when you drive it, and now that I've experienced it I'm wondering why no other electric vehicle manufacturer has come up with this yet. I'm sure they will copy it though.

Soft Speed Limiter: This is another feature that I believe is unique to the i3 and is pretty innovative. Perhaps the biggest range thief with electric vehicles is excessive speed. The i3 employes a unique soft speed limiter to gently remind you that you are driving fast and perhaps you should consider slowing down to extend your range. There are three driving modes in the i3: Comfort (this is what the car defaults to) Eco Pro and Eco Pro +. There is no soft speed limit in Comfort mode, but while driving in Eco Pro and Eco Pro +, the soft speed limits are at 75mph and 55mph respectively. The reasoning behind this is if you are in comfort mode, you likely have plenty of range and aren't consciously concerned with extending it. However if you selected Eco Pro or Eco Pro +, you likely are concerned with how much range you have and are making an effort to maximize it. Since driving fast is very inefficient, the car coaches you a bit and "reminds" you that you may want to slow down. Here's how it works: When you reach the speed that the soft limit is set at (75 mph  for Eco Pro and 55 mph for Eco Pro +) the car will not exceed that speed, even if you continue to depress the accelerator. In order to go faster, you need to continue to depress the accelerator further and after a couple seconds it realized that you are aware that you're passing the soft limit but wish to do so anyway, and it will indeed accelerate. It actually takes off rather quickly with an abrupt burst of speed at that point, almost as if to say "Well you asked for it!" I really like this "coaching" feature. There have been plenty of times in my other EVs that I was driving on the highway and wanted to keep my speed down a bit to conserve energy but would find myself creeping up and driving faster than I wanted to without noticing it. With this feature, you really won't pass the soft limit without really intending to, you can't do it by accident.

When you activate Eco Pro +  mode, you get this display prompting you to keep your speed under 55 mph for maximum range. This lead some people to assume it meant the car wouldn't go faster than 55 mph in this mode, which is not correct.

Acceleration: I saved the best for last. The i3 is really a blast to drive. I have the REx i3 which is about a half a second slower than the BEV and have been timing myself from 0-60 in around 7.6 seconds. It's not Tesla fast, but it is a really a quick little car and is much faster and more fun to drive than my ActiveE was. The instant power in the 10 mph to 50 mph range is amazing and feels quicker than my Porsche Boxster did when accelerating at those speeds. This is indeed a fun car to drive, and drives so much better than anyone would expect just from looking at it.