330e or i3?

[caseys]

Herbs said:

Thanks both.

I read that thread yesterday and still a bit none the wiser, i'm guessing they are pretty much of a muchness.

As nice as a new one would be, I have an aversion to new cars and the depreciation that comes with it especially as this is a cost saving exercise otherwise i'd be straight in an Evora.

I currently have a Q7 and a 3L E89 Z4 which I also plan to sell and get something more sports car like which I can always use as well for the commute, i'm not brave enough to jump into a EV as my sole car just yet!

i think the i3 is def the way forward, now I just have to eliminate budget creep for the options list!

Well, it depends I think on how much public charging you're going to use. And if you're fussed by smart metering stuff.

I have a 32A tethered 5m Rolec charge point akin to this one



So you get home, drive up to it, unloop the cable that loops around the body of the charger and plug in. Quite quick, nice if it's raining/cold.

Untethered the process would be park. Get cable out of frunk/boot/house, plug into car, plug into charger. Not as quick, not as nice if it's raining. Then in the morning you have to unplug both ends, loop the cable up and put it back where you hold it. Time wise, doing that twice a day (when you leave, when you get home) mounts up.

I got the tethered charge point and then spent £110 on a 5m cable to also keep in the boot, knowing that I'd use that for a few years over a few EVs, or if I gave up an EV I could sell the cable on for £50+ anyway.

Edit: 2nd hand you can in theory find these chargers around for sale 2nd hand, when people give up their cars / move house people get them uninstalled to sell on at times - then it's just getting a sparky to install. Or you can get post-mounted options if you're not parking near the house itself.

Buy a new i3 / get it on lease and you can get the home chargepoint grant which takes your install down to around £150.

Can understand on the lease front, getting mine via company fleet scheme so it being a hippy mobile it incurs quite low BIK and we're getting chargers installed at several of our offices.

I still think it'd be worth you holding fire for 4-8 weeks for the 120Ah to announce and to see what that does to the 60/94Ah used market.

[Herbs]

Thanks - I don't plan on doing any public charging if i can help it which is why the i3 appeals so much as i should be able to do the commute their and back on a single charge comfortably even taking into account the odd 20 mile detour to see my daughter. Although the standard one should suffice, i think the Rex would be the one to go for purely for the peace of mind unless there is a good reson not to?

I think tethered is the way to go

Also, as a side note, what a cracking and helpful sub forum compared to the rest of PH this days, takes me back!

[caseys]

Herbs said:

Thanks - I don't plan on doing any public charging if i can help it which is why the i3 appeals so much as i should be able to do the commute their and back on a single charge comfortably even taking into account the odd 20 mile detour to see my daughter. Although the standard one should suffice, i think the Rex would be the one to go for purely for the peace of mind unless there is a good reson not to?

I think tethered is the way to go

Also, as a side note, what a cracking and helpful sub forum compared to the rest of PH this days, takes me back!

Well, to show even more helpfulness, I'm in Bournemouth.... I'm happy to show you my 330e if you want. In November-ish onwards if you haven't decided, I'll take you for a spin in my i3 I commute form Bournemouth < - > Hursley quite a lot. The A338 roadworks suck at the moment don't they?

Dan at Woods BMW (or whatever they're called now) is a reasonable chap to talk to there about i3, I'm sure if you're persuasive enough you can get a 24 hour test drive in the one he has there.

P.S we also have quite a good lot of public charging. You know castlepoint has free charging, and both local Waitrose? http://zap-map.com/ gives you a list of public charges if you ever really want them. Also some car parks in town give free parking when you're hooked up to the charger in them.

[Herbs]

caseys said:

Herbs said:

Thanks - I don't plan on doing any public charging if i can help it which is why the i3 appeals so much as i should be able to do the commute their and back on a single charge comfortably even taking into account the odd 20 mile detour to see my daughter. Although the standard one should suffice, i think the Rex would be the one to go for purely for the peace of mind unless there is a good reson not to?

I think tethered is the way to go

Also, as a side note, what a cracking and helpful sub forum compared to the rest of PH this days, takes me back!

Well, to show even more helpfulness, I'm in Bournemouth.... I'm happy to show you my 330e if you want. In November-ish onwards if you haven't decided, I'll take you for a spin in my i3 I commute form Bournemouth < - > Hursley quite a lot. The A338 roadworks suck at the moment don't they?

Dan at Woods BMW (or whatever they're called now) is a reasonable chap to talk to there about i3, I'm sure if you're persuasive enough you can get a 24 hour test drive in the one he has there.

P.S we also have quite a good lot of public charging. You know castlepoint has free charging, and both local Waitrose? http://zap-map.com/ gives you a list of public charges if you ever really want them. Also some car parks in town give free parking when you're hooked up to the charger in them.

Awesome thank you. A look around the i3 would be really helpful once you have it. I've requested a test drive from Marshall/Woods 2 days ago and heard nothing back which is a shame especially as i've taken 10+ BMW's to them over the years.

I'm working in Bournemouth town centre and now moved to Milborne St Andrew so thankfully now avoid the A338 (used to be in Verwood and Boscombe Pier before that), my daugter lives in Ferndown so tend to go Wimborne way unless it's straight from work and then its the A338!.

[so called]

I got a 7kW https://www.chargedev.co.uk/at-home charger installed a couple of months ago.
charges in about 3 1/2 hours, (another 90 mins for the bigger battery)
Cost ca.,£750,- less the £500,- government grant which was sorted by ChargedEV after a simple application form, so £250,- changed hands.

I don't know if any chargers are better but I know mine works fine.

[Lord_P]

Another vote for the i3 here. I've had mine for over 6 months now and it just gets better and better. I went for a new 94ah BEV (pure electric) as the mechanical simplicity appealed (I got fed up of EGR, DPF etc issues on my Jag XF) and I don't regret the decision at all.

My daily commute is around a 70 mile round trip with a mix of town, fast A-road and b-road driving up and down hill and I'm currently getting home at the end of the day with 45-50% of the battery left depending on how much I've been enjoying the instant torque!

That drops off in winter mainly due to using the heater, but if you've got it plugged in overnight, which you generally will, you can set it to 'pre-condition' for your departure time which gets the cabin and batteries up to temperature and boosts your range. I was generally getting 110-120 miles during the cold snap in Feb-march this year when I picked up the car.

I charge pretty much exclusively at home via my PodPoint charger which has been 100% reliable so far. Don't worry too much about having extra slots on your RCD, I'd recently had our house re-wired and ensured that we had a spare slot for the charger, but the PodPoint installer took a new spur off the incoming main supply and added a dedicated 40amp RCD for the chargepoint. I also got in touch with the UK Power Networks who own/manage all the infrastructure in our area (South East) who upgraded the main fuse from 60Amp to 100Amp to give me a bit more headroom for running multiple appliances while charging. They did this free of charge. I got an un-tethered one (the lead isn't hard wired into it) and bought a 10m lead which I leave plugged in so it reaches to both parking spots on my drive. Plugging in when I get home takes seconds and really is no bother.

I got a grant to partially cover the cost of the charger, which I believe you can still get if you're buying a used EV as long as you've not had a charge point installed before. Check with your supplier if you go for one.

I've only really used public chargers out of curiosity, but the big rapid chargers are ace! Getting the odd free charge in a car park is nice little bonus too. Going back to use a petrol station recently felt like madness, queuing for ages to fill your car with stinking flammable liquid then paying £60 for the privilege just seemed nuts! My weekly fuel spend has gone from £60 of diesel to £8 in electricity. We use Bulb as they were cheapest for renewable power in our area, but you could go cheaper with a regular or Economy seven or tracked tariff if that doesn't bother you.

Great options to have are the sunroof, the Harmon Kardon sound system, the larger screen (if you're buying a pre-facelift car), decent wheels (the boggo ones are not pretty) and personally I love the Loft interior but that's all personal preference.

If you're going REX and want the bigger 94ah battery bear in mind there's a sweet spot between late 2016 when it was released and before April 2017 when the new tax rules came in meaning it's £120 per year to tax, or I think it's £500 if it was specced over £40K. The BEV is tax free unless it's over £40K.

There's a great Facebook group for i3 owners (and potential owners) with bags of info and a really friendly bunch of people.

Go for it

Edited by Lord_P on Tuesday 11th September 13:56

[hab1966]

Lord_P said:

If you're going REX and want the bigger 94ah battery bear in mind there's a sweet spot between late 2016 when it was released and before April 2017 when the new tax rules came in meaning it's £120 per year to tax, or I think it's £500 if it was specced over £40K. The BEV is tax free unless it's over £40K.

My current (ICE) PCH comes to an end at Xmas and im looking at options.

I'm contemplating the i3 and id probably want the Rex version. We had 2yrs with a Nissan Leaf and we were limited to where we could go with it. Trips to the coast were out, so it became a purely commute vehicle. I also got annoyed with charging spots being ICE'd or broken.

Looking at the i3 i see there is the BEV and Rex version plus there is the 'S' version. I believe there is a new model due shortly which might explain the current offers.

However, your comments regarding (road) tax have intrigued me. £500 is a lot to stump up, so i need to check this and maybe re-evaluate the model i might consider.

We do have another vehicle to fall back on, but for what id be paying, id like to get more than commuting from it, otherwise i might as well buy a used Leaf.

[Lord_P]

Yeah, I had considered the 'S' but with the options I wanted it was getting close to the £40K 'luxury' tax band. The tax is based on the list price + options + delivery etc.

Any pre-April 2017 cars are (I believe) free whether it's REX or BEV.

[Lord_P]

Some more useful info here rather than my conjecture!

https://www.nextgreencar.com/car-tax/make-model/bm...

[SiH]

My wife had a lease on a Mercedes GLC which recently ended and we bought a 2015 60Ah Rex i3 to replace it with. It was £18k and came with Rapid charge, HK audio, Pro Nav, Parking assist, Suite interior (the leather one), sunroof and a service pack to 2020 so was pretty much fully loaded. I live 64 miles from my office and can do that on a full charge with a few miles to spare and most of that journey is motorway miles at ~70mph (or 5mph depending on how the M25 feels on the day!).
It's been brilliant and I actually prefer to drive it compared to my own Jaguar XF so I'd definitely recommend it. There's no RFL to pay, no Congestion Charge, no ULEZ charge when that comes in and to do a round trip of 130 miles costs around £4 as the charger at work is currently free. The Rex is really useful as we can go as far as we want without any range anxiety. It's very nippy and agile, the first time I took my parents out in it I booted it off a roundabout and had mother swearing at me from the back seat! The boot isn't huge but you'd get an average weekly shop in there without too much stuffing and squashing.

[anonymous-user]

Just over two years ago, and just before EV's got "trendy" i walked into my local BMW dealer and bought the cheapest s/h i3 in the AUC network with less than 1,000 miles on the clock!

it's a 64AH BEV, base spec, i paid £16k for it, and it's ex-demo and had done just 368 miles!

It's zero £ to tax, when added to our insurance it actually reduced the overall cost, it costs buttons to run, and i have an OPENevse charger on the garage i installed myself. Winter range is realistically 65 miles when driven normally (summer 90 miles) but if you hyper mile and turn the A/C down a notch then those figures are easy to beat. On my crowded 32mile commute, where the average speed is pretty much exactly 30mph, it returns over 4 miles to the kWhr, meaning a mile costs less than 2pence ( overnight charge on cheap rate).

Looking around at prices today, and with around 14k miles it's still worth pretty much £16k!

[LotusJas]

I have an i8 and an i3. The i3 is a fantastic little city car - the best in fact.

[modeller]

To say the i3 is just a city car is underselling it. We run ours as a main car and are doing 18k/year, often 180+ mile trips. The i3S is blast.

[Herbs]

One question I did have that I haven't been able to find any real world info on is the handling as coming from performance cars for as long as I can remember (excl the Q7 obvs) its a concern when Parkers say that the skinny tyres lose grip in damp or cold conditions.

Why do people find it?

[Greg_D]

Herbs said:

One question I did have that I haven't been able to find any real world info on is the handling as coming from performance cars for as long as I can remember (excl the Q7 obvs) its a concern when Parkers say that the skinny tyres lose grip in damp or cold conditions.

Why do people find it?

Hmmm, best not discuss the handling...

in any measurable way, the handling is terrible (i know max torque disagrees with me) the bump and rebound damping is not right and the car pogoes when you come out of a compression, it also never really settles in long sweeping corners (esp. when they tighten on you), the brakes are literally terrible, borderline dangerous (no power and sink to the floor after the second or third hard stop). The very short wheelbase makes it feel very skittish over compressions. i am quite picky about handling as a result of my racing background, but for 95% of the people 95% of the time it will be totally fine.

that said, you CAN drive around it, and this is part of the charm of the car, but it does appear to be a bit of a bouncy little box on first aquaintance.

[caseys]

Herbs said:

One question I did have that I haven't been able to find any real world info on is the handling as coming from performance cars for as long as I can remember (excl the Q7 obvs) its a concern when Parkers say that the skinny tyres lose grip in damp or cold conditions.

Why do people find it?

To give an example you'll know, coming off the M27 and onto the A31, that steep sharp right hander coming up to Rufus Stone you can do 70 in the wet around that, but it might feel a little unsettled.

I found it's more affected by wind, being moderately light and high sided. I did also hit some standing water by Ringwood at about 60-70mph going round by Pickets Post and that felt a bit jerky compared to the 3 series.

Edit : I'd agree with what Greg said about on the suspension aspect. Having had a Supra with a full geo, good dampers and all bushes redone that was lovely and planted, the i3 doesn't feel the best after compression on the rebound.

Edited by caseys on Wednesday 12th September 10:56

[Herbs]

Thanks both, i'm not expecting it to be in the same ballpark as my other cars but braking and understeer have always been my biggest issues with cars (probably why all my cars have been RWD up until now).

[caseys]

Didn't find it understeer to be honest, doing Christchurch A35 > Cadnam at erm, around the speed limit

[Greg_D]

i need to preface what i previously said: you need to consider what you actually want from a cars' handling.

i often complain that to get a modern car moving around and 'up on it's toes' you are travelling at an utterly antisocial speed. in my i8 i often find myself deep into 3 figures and bored senseless, so i feel a bit two-faced whining about a car that feels like it's going to fall over following a bus round a roundabout

just don't expect a sports car and you'll have a blast buzzing around the low speed stuff managing it's 'personality' - i still love it...

[Lord_P]

It doesn't have bags of grip on the skinny tyres but I'd say the underlying handling is pretty good once you acclimatise to the car. The biggest initial hurdle to get used to is the regen braking. Coming off the the throttle is like putting the brakes on which can make the car feel nervous. Once you've got used to that you can hustle it along pretty quickly and with that instant torque it flies out of the corners. A slow in, fast out approach needed in general.

I don't profess to have the driving skills to comment in detail like the guys above and it's definitely no sports car in terms of handling, but it's fun it's own way. I've not driven an S, but the lower ride height and slightly wider tyres apparently resolve a lot of the handling limitations.

In terms of winter grip, I picked mine up in Feb this year just as the cold snap hit. I took it easy as it was a brand new car, still getting used to the regen and no winter tyres! The car felt fine though driving sensibly. I think this year I'll invest in second set of wheels and winters, the consensus on the FB group is that they make a big difference.

As others have said, it is susceptible to cross winds, which can make motorway driving a bit less relaxing, but in terms of standing water, I found those narrow tyres just cut through the water, unlike some wide tyred cars I've driven!

Edited by Lord_P on Wednesday 12th September 11:21