2 weeks in and Love it!

BMW i3 Forum

Help Support BMW i3 Forum:

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

Casualev

New member
Joined
Jan 18, 2016
Messages
1
Location
Wilbraham, MA
Have had new I3 for 2 weeks and it's one of the smartest things I've done. I've always believed that driving is something that we have to do so why not enjoy it. Driving the I3 is incredibly enjoyable. Have learned more from this forum then any manual. Hope to share my experiences as time goes by!
 
10 months, 14,000km, av energy consumption of 13.8kWh/100km, no maintenance or running costs (yet), wonderful drive with glassy acceleration, silence and brilliant control due to one pedal driving and I can't get my wife out of it to have the occasional drive.

Still loving it.
Can't see us going back to ICE.
 
JTM said:
10 months, 14,000km, av energy consumption of 13.8kWh/100km, no maintenance or running costs (yet), wonderful drive with glassy acceleration, silence and brilliant control due to one pedal driving and I can't get my wife out of it to have the occasional drive.

Still loving it.
Can't see us going back to ICE.

Cool, JTM. We're at 13 months, 9000km and 12.9kWh/100km. You must be doing more highway than us then.

I don't think I'll be going back either.
 
Good to hear that you are also so delighted with the i3. It really would hard to go back to an ICE with all their costs, inefficiencies, inconveniences, harshness and other disadvantages. I think our efficiency with the i3, while brilliant, is not all it could be because we don’t routinely use eco mode – love the responsive accelerator too much I guess. Nonetheless, in comparison to an ICE it is brilliant.

Regarding the highway driving mentioned, we don't do much of it, but when I have (e.g. ~100km each way Brisbane to Gold Coast every day for a week at 110km/h for large sections) I actually get better efficiency (e.g. 11.8kWh/100km) than around town. The following is my understanding of why but please correct me anyone, if I have this wrong.

While there is so much in the EV literature about the exponential-like decrease of efficiency with speed due to wind resistance, the assumption made is that high speed driving is less efficient. Now this is absolutely true of ICE and BEV, IF you are comparing constant high speed driving with constant low speed driving. i.e. all other variables are kept CONSTANT. In both cases the slower speed is more efficient, by common laws of physics I guess. However, urban driving is always changing and the need to be repetitively accelerating a 1300kg + weight (often from stand still) in urban driving will usually use far more energy per km travelled, than the gains from less wind resistance at an overall slower speed. The point is, as the ICE is so abysmally inefficient in city driving the variation between city and highway speed is very apparent, where as with an EV with very good efficiency in the city there is less comparable difference between city and highway driving. This means that sometimes city driving maybe more efficient than on the highway and sometimes not, as all sorts simple variables (like head wind) can easily tip the scales to one or the other.
 
You don't by an i3 to save money it's a car you have to enjoy driving. For me I'm still a petrol head but this could change if the i3 gets a better battery range.

The drive from Brisbane to the Gold Coast is so very boring. Its great to be able to just fly into Gold Coast Airport and not Brisbane Airport now.
 
Back
Top