Will an Optional "High Power" Battery For the i3 Be Available Soon?

I was tipped off by an anonymous follower here that the Spanish i3 online configurer has a not-yet-available option called "Bateria de mayor potencia" which Google Translate will tell you means "battery more powerful" in English. There isn't a picture for the option and you can't order it - yet. I checked the other BMW models on the site to make sure this wasn't just some kind of phantom option or mistake that was listed on all the BMW cars on the site and it isn't. It was in fact only listed on the i3 options page.

An inside look of  i3 Battery module

So I reached out to a contact I have in Spain that is well connected in the electric vehicle community there to look into this and see what they can uncover. Could the Spanish BMW site have inadvertently tipped us off as to what will soon be available? Maybe this is as innocuous as an optional, more powerful 12v battery? However I've never heard of an optional 12v battery being offered in any i3 market yet and I'm not sure why would they would need it? The 12v battery doesn't need to do very much on the i3 the first place. The car is already equipped with a cold weather package in cold-climate markets and there is no mention of a more powerful battery in that package. I would think if BMW thought the standard 12v battery was insufficient they would have just made all the cars standard with the more powerful one in the first place.

i3 Battery pack

There have been rumors that BMW is already field testing higher density batteries and that they will be available in the not-too-distant future. BMW has always maintained that the i3's battery pack is easily replaceable and that it's likely down the road when a customer determines it's time to replace their pack the replacement pack will be more robust, allowing for a greater range than the original battery did when it was new. Could that be available sooner than we anticipated?

Battery tech is constantly evolving. Tesla for example is rumored to be replacing the current batteries they use with higher density cells in the very near future and will soon open the Gigafactory(s) to manufacture them. Over in the BMW ActiveE Facebook group we recently had a fellow ActiveE driver say he had the opportunity to ride in a test MINI-E at BMW's Technology Center that was fitted with BMW's next generation of batteries and the car had about a 200 mile range. This cannot be confirmed but I have no reason to doubt his claim.

So this may be nothing, a simple mistake or misunderstanding on the BMW i3s Spanish website. Or maybe not...

Real World Range Test: BMW i3 vs BMW ActiveE

Now that BMW has begun to deliver some BEV i3s to the ActiveE Electronauts, some of those in the ActiveE trial lease program who haven't yet gotten their i3 have been asking how the i3 compares to the ActiveE. Questions on ride quality, acceleration, handling and charge rate have been asked, but the biggest concern is: How does the range compare? After all, with electric vehicles, range is paramount.

So I got together with Michael and Pamela Thwaite who just last week picked up their Ionic Silver i3 and we mapped out an 80 mile loop that would include roughly 50% highway and 50% secondary and tertiary roads. While everybody has different driving needs and patterns, it was our hope that this course would provide an evenly balanced mix of different driving conditions. That being said, this wasn't a carefully controlled scientific experiment. We didn't weigh ourselves to make sure both vehicles were carrying the same weight, we didn't calibrate our speedometers or record the barometric pressure so please don't bother commenting on why this was a flawed experiment because it wasn't perfectly controlled. We did make sure we had proper tire pressure, we took turns following and leading each other and we tried our best to maintain the same constant speeds. We drove in the default (Comfort Mode) driving mode and didn't use Eco Pro driving mode at all. We met on Saturday morning at my restaurant which has two ChargePoint EVSEs in the parking lot and after about two hours of charging we set out with Pamela driving their i3 and my wife, Meredith, driving my ActiveE. Michael and I were the co-pilots so we could live blog the event, post pictures on social media sites and make sure we stayed on course.

Both cars charging up for the challenge at my restaurant in Montclair, NJ.

With both cars fully charged, the ActiveE showed an estimated 86 miles of range, while the i3 predicted 98. Which will be more accurate?

It was a warm, cloudy day with temperatures in the 80's. We knew we would need the air conditioning so we agreed to both use it only when we were driving over 45mph and under that we would just open the windows. The first stop, about 20 miles in, was the headquarters of BMW of North America. We figured it was an appropriate destination and since it was a Saturday they wouldn't mind us parking in front of the main entrance for a photo op. We were pleased to find a life sized i3 decal applied to the glass of the front doors. BMW is evidently proud of their first all electric vehicle. At this point we had both used 19% of the available battery. I was surprised the i3 was holding its own, especially since that leg was about 75% highway. We did drive the speed limit on the Garden State Parkway though, and stuck to about 60mph. I'm sure if we drove faster the i3 would have used more battery than the ActiveE. Still, I really expected the ActiveE to jump out to an early lead since we were driving at highway speeds for most of the first leg.

At BMW HQ in Woodcliff Lake NJ - Note the i3 overlay on the doors

The next leg of the journey would be about 40 miles, with the first 30 miles or so on all secondary and tertiary roads and we would end up in Denville, NJ. Michael and I were trading texts during the way and for at least the first 20 to 25 miles of this leg (a total of 40 to 45 miles driven) we were still nearly dead even in battery state of charge with the ActiveE having a 1% advantage with battery state of charge.  On route to the Route 80 leg (which would be our highest speeds of the day and all uphill) we were driving on Route 23 at 50 to 55mph and the ActiveE started to gain an advantage of a few more percent.

Driving the back roads of Bergen county was a pleasure on a nice sunny Spring day

We took turns following and leading each other for the entire route.


Then came the blow that the i3 couldn't recover from. Driving on Route 80 upgrade at the 65 miles an hour speed limit for about 10 miles finally gave us the separation we expected. We were 60 miles in (59.8 exactly) and the ActiveE now had a 6% state of charge lead (46% to 40%) and a predicted range of 9 more miles (40 miles to 31 miles). This clearly reinforces what many of us imagined. The i3 is a warrior on low speed driving, but at faster highway speeds it's a bit out of its element and the range will be substantially compromised.  At highway speeds the weight of the car isn't nearly as important as its aerodynamics, the exact opposite of low speed driving where weight influences energy use much more. The lightweight i3 has a respectable Cd of .29, but it is tall and has a large frontal area which increases its CdA (the combination of drag coefficient and frontal drag area) making it less than ideal for cheating the wind resistance at highway speeds.

The final 20 miles were about 30% highway (this time down hill most of the way) and 70% secondary roads with about 4 miles of stop and go, traffic light to traffic light driving. We decided to make one last stop at an appropriate destination which happened to be along the way. We stopped at the Thomas Edison National Historic Park in West Orange. What would be more appropriate for an electric car challenge anyway?

After the quick stop we headed back to Nauna's and finished the day driving exactly 80 miles. The ActiveE won the range challenge by 6 miles. Here are the final statics:

2011 BMW ActiveE
Remaining SOC: 27%
Estimated miles remaining: 22
Trip efficiency: 4.1 miles per kWh
Total miles: 102

2014 BMW i3
Remaining SOC: 20%
Estimated miles remaining: 16
Trip efficiency: 5.4 miles per kWh
Total miles: 96




So adding the mileage driven to the remaining mileage the i3 ended up with 96 miles of range and the ActiveE with 102. The i3 actually came very close to predicting the actual range and was only off by 2 miles since it predicted 98 miles of range when it was fully charged that morning. My ActiveE actually beat its range prediction by 16 miles, but that is because my regular driving routing is mostly highway so the car has learned to predict the range based primarily on high speed highway driving. All in all the i3 fared about as well as I expected. It is an incredibly efficient electric vehicle and is in fact now the most efficient car sold in America. However the ActiveE has a battery that is nearly 50% larger (21.6kWh's to 32 kWh's) than the i3's battery and in the end battery size beat efficiency. If the i3 had just a couple more kWh's, I'd be writing a different ending. BMW has been billing the i3 as its "Megacity" car. That was even the codename during development and they weren't kidding. It is much better suited to live its life on congested city streets than it is roaming the high speed highways of the US and the Autobahns of its homeland. I would speculate the i3 will only go about 70 miles if driven all highway, and that's at the 65 mile speed limit. If you were to increase that to 70 or 75 miles than the range will likely drop to 60 to 65 miles. However if you were to drive on secondary roads at around 35 to 40mph, I suspect 100 to 110 miles would be easily attainable in moderate temperatures when you don't need the air conditioning or heater much. So if I were rating the range of the all electric BMW i3, I'd say 60 to 110 miles, conditions provided.

The Thwaite's i3 topping off after the range challenge

One last no-so-small detail. The i3 we used is brand new, while my ActiveE is 28 months old and has 20,100 miles on it. Based on my recorded data I believe its battery has lost between 8% and 9% capacity. If you factor that in, it's clear that while my two year old ActiveE has a slightly better range than a new i3, it had a substantially better range when it was new. Probably about 15% more, which actually coincides with the EPA range ratings for both vehicles.



Some more pictures of the day:

BMW i3 BEV vs REx: Your Purchase Matters

On REx models the i3's range extender sits next to the electric motor above the rear axle.

Many people considering a BMW i3 are a bit torn between the full electric version (BEV), and the range extended version (REx). What they may not know is their decision will indeed help BMW decide what electric range their future EV offerings have.

Now that the EPA range rating for the BEV i3 has been announced at 81 miles per charge customers can finally decide if they BEV i3�s range will suit their needs. If it doesn�t and they still want an i3, their only choice is to fork over the extra $3,850, and get the range extender. There are electric vehicle enthusiasts that consider this unacceptable because they don�t ever want to put gasoline in their electric vehicle, it just seems wrong to them. Others don�t mind, since they will be driving on electric the vast majority of time and using a little gas is OK with them.

Basically there are four main groups of perspective i3 purchasers:

1)      They are interested in the i3 but the 81 mile EPA rating is just too low for them and the range extender is out of the question. They walk away from the car and consider their other electric vehicle offerings.

2)      The 81 mile range works for them. They get the BEV i3 and understand its limitations.

3)      They really wanted the BEV i3 but the range rating was too low for their comfort so they reluctantly ordered the i3 REx. (I fit in this box)

4)      They really liked the idea of the range extender from the start and wouldn�t have bought an i3 without it. The ability to drive primarily on electric but have the range extender there for the few times they need more range is perfect for them. Not ever worrying about getting stuck on the road because they ran out of charge or a public charger was broken or blocked is paramount for these people.

Of course there are other factors, like local incentives and especially HOV access in California, but these are generally the four boxes the typical potential i3 customer will fit in. It will be interesting what the percentage of BEV buyers to REx buyers are, and don�t think BMW isn�t watching that very closely. I have personally spoken to BMW mangers that have said the breakdown of BEV to REx sales will give BMW a clear indication of what range people are comfortable with. If BEV sales dominate, BMW will take that as verification that the range they gave the i3 was right for this vehicle and perhaps consider future low-range EV's. Conversely if the majority of i3s sold are range extended versions, or if sales in general don�t meet expectations they have a clear message: The potential customers didn�t believe 81 miles per charge was enough, especially for premium brand EV and they are more likely to make the next EV they offer have a longer range. In other words, your purchase is your vote. Buying a BEV i3 is telling BMW that 81 miles is fine, and buying a REx i3 is telling them it�s not.

Hopefully BMW will break out the sales of the BEV i3s and the REx i3s in their monthly sales reporting instead of just including them in one group. That may just help to give us a better idea of what to expect next from the i brand.

Volts For Oil: Gas Cars Burn Coal Too!

British actor and comedian Robert Llewellyn maintains a video blog called Fully Charged where he reviews electric cars and discusses all aspects of the plug-in vehicle industry. Llewellyn is an electric vehicle enthusiast and produces some really interesting and informative electric vehicle content in the series and I'm a big fan of his.

The latest topic he tackled is the "Long Tailpipe" argument which many people who do not support the switch to electric vehicles like to use in their argument against them. The Long Tailpipe argument basically states that electric vehicles are not zero emission at all, since the electricity that powers them comes from dirty sources like coal. Since EVs don't actually have tailpipe emissions, to be fair they say the real tail pipe stretches all the way to the power plant that generated its fuel, thus the long tailpipe.

There is no denying that the argument has truth to it. Much of the world's electricity is made by burning coal, and coal is dirty any way you slice it. Coal is in fact the dirtiest of all fossil fuels. When burned, it produces carbon dioxide and other emissions in flue gas. That contributes to global warming, creates acid rain, causes various respiratory illnesses and pollutes the water. However as Llewellyn shows, electric vehicles aren't the only vehicles that need electricity. Gas cars need it too, and a LOT of it in fact. Refining oil to make gasoline is an energy intensive process and the majority of energy used is - you guessed it: electricity.  

Llewellyn does a good job of explaining how much electricity is needed to refine gasoline, and that's just the refining process. He estimates that it takes 4.5kWk's of electricity to refine every gallon of gasoline. I've even seen that estimate quoted as high as 7kWh's per gallon from other sources. If you simply take the energy needed to refine the oil and put it into a battery instead of going through the whole process of refining, shipping, trucking and pumping (and the gas pumps need electric also) the stuff, you can power an EV to go 10 to 20 miles! Remember, that's just the energy used to refine the oil, nothing else. So if electric vehicle opponents want to bring up the long tailpipe argument, they then need to factor in the dirty coal emissions to every gallon of gas they burn.

However it's not as if every EV mile is powered by coal. In fact, here in the US coal fired power plants are closing all the time, and we now rely on coal for less than 40% of our electricity supply. Every year the grid gets cleaner as more renewables are introduced and outdated, polluting power plants are shuttered. This is happening as the supply chain of gasoline continues to get dirtier. How is that? That's because as we use up the current oil reserves, we are finding it harder and harder to find more. This is forcing us to use more energy to drill deeper, to go further offshore, and to even use unconventional sources like the Canadian tar sands. For example. producing one barrel of tar sands oil generates three to five times the global warming emissions that producing the same amount of conventional oil does and every day three million barrels of drinking water are used in its production. So you can see the supply chains for electricity and gasoline are moving in opposite directions. Electricity is getting cleaner, and gasoline is getting dirtier all the time.

My ActiveE and solar array. EV+PV is empowering and true zero emission driving

Plus, as the owner of an electric vehicle it is possible to make your own renewable energy to power your car. Three years ago I installed a solar array on my home and produce my own renewable energy for my EV. There is a great feeling of empowerment when you can make your own personal transportation fuel, and you know it is really zero emission driving. I've talked to many other EV owners who like me, installed a solar electric system shortly after discovering the world of electric drive. Solar powered electric vehicles are the future, we've just begun to scratch the surface of what is possible and I'm thrilled I've had the opportunity to live the future now. Anyway, back to Llewellyn's video. Take the four minutes to watch it. He does a fantastic job of explaining how gas cars are really coal powered cars too!

US i3 Deliveries Begin!

i3s sitting at a port in the US awaiting vehicle carriers to take them to dealerships

BMW of North America issued a press release today confirming that US i3 deliveries have begun. Not such a surprise since as of yesterday dealers across the country began taking in i3s.

BMW of North America's CEO Ludwig Willisch said of the i3 launch: �Today marks a big day at BMW of North America � What started out as a dream for an innovative sustainable vehicle under the BMW i brand can now be found on streets across the U.S.�

There are currently hundreds of i3s in the US, either at the port, dealerships or en-route to the dealership. However only the BEV i3 is being released at the moment. The range extended version (REx) is still being held up at the port for what is assumed finalization of the EPA certifications. That is expected to be finished very soon and the REx vehicles can then begin shipping to dealers also. 
And so it begins...

Breaking: BMW i3 REx Gets $2,500 CVRP Rebate in California & BEVx Designation

We finally got the official answer to one of the big questions i3 REx customers in California have been wondering. Will the i3 REx qualify for the full $2,500 CVRP Rebate, or will it only get $1,500 like other plug in hybrids do.

The Center For Sustainable Energy just posted the answer on their website. The i3 REx will indeed qualify for the full $2,500 rebate, just as pure EV's do. This is a little surprising since it has been reported on various sites this week that the i3 REX will not qualify for the full rebate and will not be classified BEVx. Combined with the $7,500 federal tax credit, this means most California residents can expect a full $10,000 off the purchase price of a new i3, whether they get the BEV or REx version.

Additionally, the i3 REx appears to be the first extended range electric vehicle to qualify for CARB's BEVx designation, according to this executive order.

It was a good day for the i3 REx in California

Breaking: BEV i3's Arrive At Dealers Monroney Label Revealed

As expected, the i3 is officially the Most Efficient Car in America. The 81 miles per charge range is a bit disappointing though.

BMW has just now released the BEV i3's from the ports and they are en-route to dealers. The i3's with range extenders have not been released and will remain at the ports a little longer. The common belief it that the EPA range certification for the REx hasn't been finalized yet so the REx cars need to wait a little longer at the port.

The BEV i3 is rated at 81 miles per charge, which is somewhat of a disappointment, but the efficiency figures are off-the-charts good. 138 MPGe City, 111 MPGe Highway and 124 MPGe Combined. That makes the BEV i3 the most efficient automobile on the road in America, and by a good margin. More on this later, I just wanted to get this up as it was breaking.

Below are the top 10 most fuel efficient automobiles for 2014 as listed by FuelEconomy.gov