Maximum electric range

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groci3

Member
Joined
Jan 26, 2015
Messages
9
When I fully charge my i3, I see electric range prediction between 75 to 77 miles.

I thought it was supposed to be between 80 and 100 miles depending upon the mode you drive in?
I drive mostly in Eco Pro+ or Eco Pro mode and usually charge when the miles left is between 10 to 20 miles.

My car is 2 months old, hope there is nothing wrong with the battery.
 
The predicted range is based on the last 18-miles or so of your driving. The outside temperature can play a significant part in your range estimates. As the temperatures warm up, you'll likely see your estimated range value go up...but, consider, your driving style can play a big part in that as can your climate control use and habits. Lots of short trips where the car can cool or warm up and require a fair amount of conditioning to be comfortable will be worse than one longer trip where it can just maintain. As can the speeds at which you drive...the max range really does start to drop off as you go faster.
 
groci3 said:
When I fully charge my i3, I see electric range prediction between 75 to 77 miles.

I thought it was supposed to be between 80 and 100 miles depending upon the mode you drive in?
I drive mostly in Eco Pro+ or Eco Pro mode and usually charge when the miles left is between 10 to 20 miles.

My car is 2 months old, hope there is nothing wrong with the battery.

Same here. Nothing wrong with your battery, just something wrong with BMW claiming things that are demonstrably untrue.
 
My real range is always much more than prediction. Charged last night after 116km ( 72 miles ) with 18% SOC remaining. Range prediction was only 111km. That is in cold weather, we had -6.5C yesterday morning.

Frank
 
ryandesign said:
Same here. Nothing wrong with your battery, just something wrong with BMW claiming things that are demonstrably untrue.

The EPA estimated range is 81 miles for the BEV so there's nothing wrong with BMW citing that figure. Economy/range figures have to be established under controlled conditions to make comparisons valid. Your mileage always varies.

Want to maximize range? Make sure you consistently drive on level roads at a steady 35 mph nonstop for at least 20 miles on 82° F days. The guess o'meter will shoot through the roof.

Inconsistent range estimates aren't a phenomenon new to the i3 even. Driving my E90 around the city produces a range to empty estimate in the 170 miles territory. But after cruising on the freeway for about 20 minutes, it magically jumps to 330 or higher even. No conspiracy at work. Just a pitfall of attempting to estimate the future.
 
I too think BMW made unreasonable claims, especially as range is such a key issue for EVs.

I typically get about 75 miles now whatever mode I use but that is normally with heating off, and I have had the car for long enough to work out how to max range. I always find that the car’s range estimate is fairly accurate although if I drive on 1 or 2 long journeys instead of my normal very short journeys range does improve slightly. I’m waiting to see if it does improve when it gets warmer - its around 10 to 12 deg in the middle of the day now.
 
ryandesign said:
80 is a reasonable claim. 100 is not...
The average efficiency of our BEV over our first 1,600 miles is 5.6 mi/kWh. If we used all 18.8 kWh of our battery pack, our average range would be 105 miles. I always drive in Eco Pro+ with ACC set to 5 mph over the speed limit. I usually allow ACC to stop and start our i3 in traffic and to control its speed on highways. We live in an ideal BEV environment, so I know that our range is above average and that BMW's range estimates are attainable without resorting to extreme measures.
 
It's a long time ago but I'm pretty sure that when I first looked at buying an I3 the salesman said the "Official" range was 107 Miles and that translated to around 75 Miles in the "Real World"
 
With the weather finally warming up in Wisconsin I find my i3 BEV range starting in the low 90s to a high of 106. Yesterday I started with 98 for range, drove 84 miles with 8 miles still left when I returned home. Majority of the trip was at highway speed of 55. Trip computer showed 5.1 miles per kwh.

I try to drive with a helium foot. Easy on acceleration, stay at 55 or less and coast whenever possible when I have to slow down. The coasting part does require some getting use to, but it is the best way to take advantage of all the things that the i3 has to offer. As a Volt owner for 3 years I am very pleased with the i3 range.
 
Consider range or mpg on an ICE...the range could be anywhere from 18-28mpg on a car, city to highway, and maybe an average of 23mpg in this typical car. So, what kind of range would you predict for it if it had a 10 gallon tank? Would it be 180 miles, or 280 miles , or 230 miles? And, would any of them be accurate?

There are so many variables, weather, traffic, terrain, driving style, total load in the car. The car estimates based on your last 18-miles of travel. That may or may not be indicative of the next distance you travel...it is just an estimate, and it is somewhat conservative. It does adjust as you drive.

The 81 miles the USA version predicts based on EPA testing is done under strict conditions, so it is repeatable for any vehicle being tested. It is unlikely your driving situation will be identical. YOu could get much better, or worse.

The car will tell you your miles/Kw history, so you can do an instantaneous estimate if you wish, but the car is constantly adjusting as you drive its estimate. And, sort of like the gas gauge on your ICE, empty is not necessarily when you run out of gas. On the i3, it's close, but there's a little wiggle room.
 
There are two different issues in play here: the accuracy of the Guess-o-Meter in daily driving and whether an i3 is a 60 mile car (what my G-o-M claims), an 80 mile car(most everyone else), or a 100 mile car (EV hyper milers). If you get in the car and see a 60 mile range, but you know through experience that you really can go 80, or if you have a REx, then that is not such a big deal. But if you see 60 miles after a full charge and you have proven that you really only have 60 then that is a very different situation. The real problem is that unless you are willing to get stranded once or twice you can never be certain exactly which issue you are having on any given day. Unless you have no fuel in the tank a REx driver will never know for sure what their true range really is since the generator will start before you run out of permitted battery capacity. It all makes it very difficult to tell exactly what the actual range really is for any given i3 on any given day. Add in effects of temp on battery capacity and the effects of the various preconditioning strategies and you can see just how complicated the whole situation is.
 
I simply multiply miles/kWh in the trip computer by 19 kW (new-battery capacity), and fuggedaboutit. So an average 4 mi/kWh is about a 75-mile range.

There's been little drama with my BEV after nearly 6,000 miles, but maybe I'm not trying hard enough. :D
 
I see this as the same issue with an ICE. Drive it on the interstate non-stop, and with mine, I can get in excess of 30mpg...drive it stop and go in the city, and I may be lucky to get 18mpg. I just got back from a trip on the interstate, the guessometer on my ICE says I can go another 350 miles to empty...well, since most of my next driving will be in the city, it will be WAY off. Is it lying? No, it is basing its information on the previous use, and neither of them are totally accurate since it has a buffer built in to empty. My ICE probably has a much bigger buffer than my EV, but the concept is the same.

Reset the tripometer when you recharge or reset the trip computer and see what you get. As things warm up, the community average is, or was last summer, in excess of 4 miles/Kw, so the 81-miles advertised is entirely possible. Some get less, some get more for the reasons I already listed. And, the REx version, because it is carrying around what amounts to a fat mother-in-law all of the time in the back, averages slightly less.
 
If the i3 had a 200+ mile battery nobody would care about any of this....... Or if there were DCFC's on every corner!
 
I don't worry about it because I use it as it was originally designed - typical commuting (well, mine is actually less than typical since I retired). The average user during BMW's years of testing in the Electronaut program was about 34 miles/day...and, the i3 was designed to handle that with some margin in case you wanted to do a side trip. IT does that easily, regardless of the weather and driving style. It would improve the usefulness in some situations if CCS units were common, but as more and more companies realize they can make a green statement by providing EVSE's at their workplace, and a typical person is there more than 8-hours a day, recharging at work could extend the usefulness of the vehicle as well. Restaurants, shopping, and theaters will eventually get on the program as well, letting people top off while they do their thing. Somewhere long in the future, we may see inductive charging in the roadways, but I'd be surprised to see that in my lifetime. AN inductive charging pad in parking spaces either at home or away would be nice, and I think they will show up in the next few years, at least as an option on new vehicles. BMW has already shown one of these as a prototype and says the efficiency is quite good.
 
WoodlandHills said:
If the i3 had a 200+ mile battery nobody would care about any of this....... Or if there were DCFC's on every corner!

Not sure if the "200+ mile" will do, as you go to Tesla forum, there are also talks about range. Especially the drop of range in cold weather freak people out.

I think it has to be a combination, not either-or.
 
archieb said:
I try to drive with a helium foot. Easy on acceleration, stay at 55 or less and coast whenever possible when I have to slow down.

Yes, you can increase range by using Eco Pro+ and using the techniques you mentioned. But if you're doing that, you're probably driving in the city, where you likely don't need the full range anyway. Where you really need the full range is when you make the occasional longer trip.

A person considering buying an electric car is likely going to compare the car's range to the longest distance they expect to need to travel. For me, as a single person with a single car, I do not have the luxury of buying a car that is useful only in some situations, and taking a different car on longer trips. The BMW dealer in my city is not participating in the Flexible Mobility Program so I also cannot borrow an ICE car from them for longer trips. So the car I buy has to work in all situations. When I bought my i3 BEV I knew the EPA range was 81 miles, I knew this was not enough for my occasional longer trip, I knew I would need to charge on the way. But someone who hears a dealer say 100-mile range and believes this means they will be able to drive somewhere 100 miles away will be disappointed.

A few days ago I finally made my first occasional longer trip, which is 92 miles, primarily on Interstate 35, where the speed limit is 70 but other drivers get annoyed if you don't drive at least 75. If the car had 100 miles of range in this real-world situation, that would be fine, but it does not, and I had to stop to charge. The rapidity with which the guess-o-meter and the state-of-charge indicator decrease at 75 mph is alarming. And I was not impressed with the car's ability to direct me to charging stations. Its only suggestion was a charging station about 15 minutes from my starting point. Since charging is faster when the battery is less full, I was expecting to be directed to a charging station at the halfway point of my trip perhaps, or even as far as the battery would take me, so that I could charge faster and also more accurately estimate when I had sufficient charge to make it to my destination. So I had to ignore the car's suggestion and use the PlugShare app on my phone to find other charging stations.
 
BMW calls the car a mega city vehicle for a reason. Yes, you can use it otherwise, but it has a lot of compromises even if you opt for a REx. The adage, the right tool for the right job comes to mind. Not too many cities that have 70mph roads you'd be on for a long time if using the car as designed. But, the same is true for any vehicle...the faster you go, the more drag, and therefore energy required to keep you moving. Throw in some hills to climb, and it gets worse, since regeneration on the back side is never as efficient going back in as it is coming out.

IOW, the i3 in either variation is not the right car for everyone. It is unique on the marketplace being designed from the ground up for a specific purpose. Step outside of that use pattern, and either live with the consequences, or buy another car.
 
websterize said:
I simply multiply miles/kWh in the trip computer by 19 kW (new-battery capacity), and fuggedaboutit. So an average 4 mi/kWh is about a 75-mile range.

There's been little drama with my BEV after nearly 6,000 miles, but maybe I'm not trying hard enough. :D

That's probably the best way to understand and estimate your range. Multiplying by 19 is OK, but I'd recommend multiplying your efficiency by 18 to be on the safe side so you don't come up a little short. The car has 18.8kWhs available when it's brand new, under ideal conditions. I'm measuring ~18.5 kWhs on average available after 10 months ans 21,000 miles of ownership.
 
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