Is my range too low?

BMW i3 Forum

Help Support BMW i3 Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
S

sdobbie

Member
Joined
May 31, 2015
Messages
22
Hi, I recently bought an ex demonstrator I3 with range extender. It had 8000 miles and was manufactured November 2013. When fully charged the indicated range is usually very close to 80 miles give or take 2 miles. I get 4.3 miles per Kilowatt hour on my daily journey to work which mostly involves dual carriageway driving at 55mph. The problem is that it seems to use more miles of range than the distance I actually drove. When the battery indicator is at two and a half bars it only says 40 miles usually. I am just wondering if this is normal?
 
4.3 m/kWh would give you just over 80 miles if the battery has its nominal capacity of 18.8kWh which agrees with the range estimator at full cahrge. But the indicated range is calculated over the last 20 or so miles of driving, so if your last few miles have required more energy the range will be correspondingly less. And vice versa. So i's quite possible to see what you observe.
 
sdobbie said:
Hi, I recently bought an ex demonstrator I3 with range extender. It had 8000 miles and was manufactured November 2013. When fully charged the indicated range is usually very close to 80 miles give or take 2 miles. I get 4.3 miles per Kilowatt hour on my daily journey to work which mostly involves dual carriageway driving at 55mph. The problem is that it seems to use more miles of range than the distance I actually drove. When the battery indicator is at two and a half bars it only says 40 miles usually. I am just wondering if this is normal?
Click to expand...
Welcome to the GoM, or the Guess 'o Meter. The range indicator in many EVs can vary wildly so the key thing to look at is your actual efficiency and remaining battery power. Mine will often say that with 3/4 of a battery that I only have 40 miles of range when I have the A/C on MAX when in reality it's more like 60 miles once I have actually done the trip.
 
I usually only charge to around 80% and have never discharged into the first capacity bar which would be 25%. Would it be better to do a full battery cycle to see if that gets my range prediction back up? It is now around 75 miles at 100%. It is not even cold here.
 
I went into the service menu and found that the battery capacity is only 18.2kwh so that's 600 watt hours under what it's meant to be. The battery was at 15 degrees C.
 
That's only the car's best guess. A full cycle will probably allow it to improve the accuracy. Also it's temperature dependent and 15C is quite low.

In any case 600Wh is only 2 miles range. My guessed range at full charge varies by up to 15 miles. Stop worrying and enjoy the ride.
 
BMW's i3 control logic will never let you fully charge or discharge the battery, so stop worrying about only going up to 80% or leaving 25% in the thing! WHen it says it's full, it's not, when it says it's empty, it's not. They did this on purpose. It's a 22Kw battery, and you can only use somewhere between 18-19Kw of the thing. It's not a cellphone or battery powered drill.

The ideal battery temperature is 77F, or 25C. IF you set a departure time, that is the temperature it tries to get the batteries to for max range.
 

Similar threads

C
My Black Beauty, i3 94Ahr Rex
Replies
1
Views
571
Clanduncan
C
D
3200+ Mile Trip in my 2017 i3 Rex
Replies
10
Views
9K
Skyking6976
S
E
1700 miles in 48 hours -- 120 Ah BEV...
2
Replies
25
Views
11K
eNate
E
M
Good News for EV Owners with Less Than 125 Miles of Range
Replies
0
Views
3K
MikeB
M
M
150 mile commute, is the i3 REX up to it?
Replies
11
Views
11K
WaffleHouse
W

Latest posts

Back
Top