Used 2014 i3 showing 14 kWh battery capacity, 50 mile max range.

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vinc

Active member
Joined
Nov 9, 2018
Messages
31
Hi there! We were about to purchase a used 2014 i3 with 50k miles. The car looks great, but when the dealer charged the battery in preparation for us taking the car, we realized that the maximum range was 50 miles. We checked kapa and got 14 kWh. Luckily we had not signed anything yet.

I had never seen an i3 with a battery this toast. But the car looks otherwise great. Any chance that this might be covered by the 30% degradation warranty? Could this just be a fluke? It is San Diego, so not crazy cold or hot weather. Should we just run away from this car as fast as we can?

Thanks!
 
Ask to take it for a test-drive day. The range is a computer guesstimate, based on how it was driven last. Set an i3 on "Comfort" (which should really be labeled "Sport"), and lead-foot it out on the freeway and play Indy 500, with the AC at max, and you will see a lower range. Set it on EcoPro, and drive gently, with a normal AC setting, and the range will increase. Drive it around using your "normal" driving style, set on EcoPro, for at least an hour, then charge it up, and see what the range is.

When the temp is above 50 degrees, I normally get a range between 68 and 71, but over xmas my son borrowed the car to go across town to visit relatives, and freewayed back (he lives in Indy, home of the "500" :p ), and the range dropped to 51 when I charged it after he got back.
 
Thank you! I had them check with a BMW dealer (they are not, but another dealer from the same chain is).

Likely it might be the computer getting confused, since the car has probably been sitting a lot and then suddenly test driven for the past few weeks. But the trick is that we would be going about 150 miles out of our way to buy this car. If it turns out that the battery is truly toast, things would get complicated :)
 
If you are keen on this car, it takes about 20 minutes of driving to have the computer recalculate the range left. You could go, ask for a half hour with the car -note the starting range and the odometer mileage -
put the car in ecopro mode, drive around for a half hour, look at mileage driven against range left and see if the range has increased as the computer learns your driving style. if the car says 50 miles range when you start, then you drive 30 miles and it then says you now have 30+ miles left - golden. If it says 20 - there is likely a battery issue.
 
FWIW, I've driven as much as about 15-miles and have the estimated range to empty stay the same because where and how I was driving was a lot different than what had proceeded it. Lots of short trips in the winter where it all cools off completely in between and the heat runs at max to bring the cabin up to temp is tough on the battery, especially if it's a REx. The BEV has a heat pump...the REx does not, so it much less efficient at heating than the BEV. About the same with cooling, though...the differences there are because of the extra weight of the REx motor and peripherals (gas tank, muffler, etc.).
 
Thank you! We will probably ask for the extended test drive. This is the BEV version, so hopefully we can tell rather quickly. The dealer was able to talk to BMW and they confirmed that in any case it would not meet the threshold for warranty replacement.
 
vinc said:
Thank you! We will probably ask for the extended test drive. This is the BEV version, so hopefully we can tell rather quickly. The dealer was able to talk to BMW and they confirmed that in any case it would not meet the threshold for warranty replacement.

I bought a CPO 2014 BEV and my battery Kapa read 12.5 recently and the dealer told me that mine still doesn't fit in the category of replacing under the 30% warranty. It's since gone back up to 13.2ish and I'm hoping that it will drop below the threshold before the warranty expires. I have just over 60k miles on the car (only bought it in Oct 2018). I continue to drive it, but now getting a Drive Train error that, I believe is tied to the battery.

The others are correct about the range. It is based on recent driving habits. My 2014 with 60k miles has still sometimes shown 73ish miles on the GuessOMeter so don't get too hung up on the "range."

Good luck with it! I love my car!
 
Quick update. We had a chance to drive the i3 for a good 20 mintes or so, and although that was not enough to recalibrate the computer, we soon realized that the estimated miles were not going down in accordance with the actual miles driven, they were much slower.

So we went ahead an purchased the car. We did the 120ish mile drive back without much drama, starting with a full charge and stopping a couple of times for DC charging, with mostly freeway driving (although on Eco Pro +) We arrived home with an estimated 10 miles left.

Long story short, the car is working beautifully and after a couple of days the estimated miles are already going up, around 60 at this point. My guess is that real word miles are around 65 on Comfort, which is not too bad.

Thanks for all your help!
 
Well, that's great! Well done and congrats and welcome to the i3 world. Look through this forum. It has more info than even the dealerships seem to have! :D
 
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