i3 - BEV v REx

[Doshy]

Amateurish said:

Is this a reference to 100% First Year Allowance for the i3? So you can set off the full purchase price against tax.
eta - I'm not sure this would work with PCP though?

yes, it does. Not with a lease though.

[E36GUY]

I'm just coming to the end of a 5 day test that I blagged. I've done about 300 miles of different types of journey including 110 on Sunday using about £3 fuel in the REX. I did however get home still with 50% battery so I guess when you get to know the car better you can manage the energy as that day I could obviously used the REX less.

What an astonishing product! I am so impressed. Never have I driven anything quite so relaxing either! Absolutely perfect for my commute, karting the kids about on the weekend to this and that and the ability to do relatively normal longer journeys using the extender really makes it. My usual fuel spend is around £300 month so I think BMW may be about to get another order.

[c2mike]

I agree - a lost opportunity to create the best small EV. Hope the facelift has a significantly bigger capacity battery...

TransverseTight said:

Thinking about the original twe choices..

How about option C) An extra 5-10kWh of batteries in the space where the REX goes?

You'll get £3,000 off the list for not having the REX. IIRC Batteries are about £400/kWh at the moment. So that woul dget you another 7.5kWh.

With that much you'd be guaranteed to get over 100 miles rangeand maybe as much as 150. I'd then be almost close enough to make my regular 150 miles trip with minimal time stopped for charging.

In fact I'd have happpily paid an extra £10k to get double the battery capacity thats standard at the mo. By the time you've spend £33k on the car with options going the rest of the way isn't so painful. It would be yet another 100kg heavier - but that's stuill not a heavy car.

http://jalopnik.com/what-bmws-i3-tells-us-about-ba...

Probably my biggest worry about buying now... about 6 months after I get mine delivered they'll announce a 40kWh version using v1.1 batteries.

[Legacywr]

I wonder if a company like Alpina will make a longer range fuel tank for them?

[TransverseTight]

Doshy said:

Tesla definitely on my shopping list but not now :-( When they sort it so you drive into a tesla garage and then your low charge batteries are swopped over for a fresh back in a few minutes, then...... (this I'm led to believe is the goal)

If you're self employed the i3, on PCP, is very cheap over 3 years.

Battery swap was possible but its now looking more likely that ultra rapid charging will be possible in next gen batteries. Ive been reading up on solid state batteries and different anode treatments that are in the labs.

Looks like the end game is 200kWh packs that weigh about 150kg and charge in a couple of minutes. Dont think before 2020, but I may be wrong.

I decided to cancel my i3 in the end. Im doing too many long distance trips to make it my only car. Shame as it was lovely. Ill hang on till either an i4 with 200 mile battery only range comes out, the Tesla model III is out or the used price of an 85kWh Model S is less than £50k.

On a side note the Tesla gigafactory is epic. Apparently when its complete it will make as many batteries as were made world wide in 2013 by all other manufacturers put together! Flippin eck! im gonna wind up the climate change thread guys later and say if we dont get some more offshore wind soon well lose our car industry!

[ChrisW.]

So what would be the supply line be for a 200KWh battery charging in a couple of minues ?

That would be a supply of around 10 Megawatts --- or 40,000 amps at close to mains voltage.

A tad optimistic ??

There is every probabilty that you would single handedly take down the grid

[TransverseTight]

I was thinking around a couple of megawatts using 20kv sockets. Im not talking everyone having one at home. Something akin to the Tesla super chargers... which run upto 8 bays of 120kw chargers. Though they are in pairs and you only get. 60kw if someone else is charging next to you. 1MW sounds a lot... but think how much an office block uses on 20 floors of lights, pc and aircon. That has about the same footprint as a petrol station. Not going to happen overnight, but theres planty of places to get a 10-20 kv feed of the grid. To level out the demand spikes for when a car is charging & to reduce the leccy bill which has demand charges for commercial customers... some stationary battery or capcitor storage will help. Again telsa already thought of this and use their own powerpack at the end of the charging bays. In future they will off px for your old car pack... say after 100,000 miles its down to 85% capacity its still can be swapped to use in a charging bay.

[amstrange1]

The obvious mitigation against the peak power requirement is some local energy storage; as alluded to above. The petrol/diesel in fuel stations isn't pumped on demand from the refinery or oil field to your tank - so why would an EV rapid charge station be any different?

I'd also question the need for a 200kWh pack if you can charge at such high rates anyway. Given the likely weight to capacity/range ratio for Lithium-based packs, I'd not be too worried about an EV with <150 mile range if it could be recharged in <5 mins and was relatively light. Conversely, if the weight and cost per kWh of packs come down sufficiently, then there is less of a business case for exceptionally rapid charging.

[Greg_D]

How is everyone's charge doing on their i3 BEVs

When i first got mine, fully charged with climate turned off it said 88 miles
now it is 71 miles and yesterday i did 60 miles in one return journey from full, driving steadily (not hypermiling, but no large throttle openings - 65mph cruise on motorway and only had the heating on occasionally to keep the screen clear) and had 1 mile left.

I'm keeping a close eye on it......not especially happy, tbh

[Amateurish]

61 miles does not sound good - I would expect to get more like 80 miles at that kind of speed.

[ChrisW.]

How many miles has the car done ?

Mine is up around 90 miles, but I have only done a few thousand miles ... and use Eco Pro + most of the time.

[Greg_D]

Its done less than 3k. I use comfort most of the time but even allowing for that, it used to get 88 miles showing and it is now showing late 60s after a full charge. At what point do you lot think I need to get bmw involved?

[ChrisW.]

Have you had the latest firmware update ?

I'm not saying that it will give you more miles, but the number may make more sense.

I have done over 100 miles on a charge but had to be very focussed ... I wouldn't expect this to be battery issues.

[Greg_D]

Yup, latest everything the car was in the garage for a little while having some work done work done so everything got updated then it's got the hill hold function and the updated satnav screen so I assume that's the latest version

[Nish]

My i3 was significantly lower on range this morning.

Usual drive which I've been doing for 3 weeks - 64 miles cruising at a pretty constant 70mph.

Usually arrive at destination with 15 mile range warning just coming on, this morning I was down to 5 miles.

Colder weather having an impact?

[Amateurish]

I experienced the same thing - I think it was rain and colder temp.

[ChrisW.]

That would make sense.

Have you tried pre-conditoning the car off the mains before you leave home ?