Charger Locking and Timer

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arlorose

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 18, 2014
Messages
47
Hi all,

I'm (hopefully) picking my i3 up tonight, and I had a couple of questions I was wondering about (but can't find due to no online manual).

1) I've read somewhere that the i3 locks the charger in when you lock the doors, thus making someone who needs the plug if your car is charged unable to do so in a public lot. What have folks found with this?

2) With the EV plan on my electrical, I'd like to set the car to charge at home at 11:00PM. If I do that, when I plug it in elsewhere so I have to go through some iDrive cascade to turn off the timer... or turn on the timer at home? It would be awesome if the GPS in the car could see I'm at home and assume I don't want charging until 11:00PM.

How have people managed any of this?
 
arlorose said:
Hi all,

I'm (hopefully) picking my i3 up tonight, and I had a couple of questions I was wondering about (but can't find due to no online manual).

1) I've read somewhere that the i3 locks the charger in when you lock the doors, thus making someone who needs the plug if your car is charged unable to do so in a public lot. What have folks found with this?

2) With the EV plan on my electrical, I'd like to set the car to charge at home at 11:00PM. If I do that, when I plug it in elsewhere so I have to go through some iDrive cascade to turn off the timer... or turn on the timer at home? It would be awesome if the GPS in the car could see I'm at home and assume I don't want charging until 11:00PM.

How have people managed any of this?

Yes, the connector does lock and will not release unless you unlock the doors, even if the car is finished charging.

As far as I know, there is no location based delayed charging feature, so if you do have it set to charge later, you'll need to go into idrive then Settings>Charging>Charge Now. Should only take a couple seconds.
 
AndyW said:
When you turn the car off, the goodbye screen gives you the option to go into charging settings, so it's very easy.

I think the poster wondered whether there was any GPS data used in the delayed charging set up, such that when plugged in at home the car knows only to charge during the off peak window, and when plugged in away from home the car knows to charge immediately. There is no such functionality in the i3, and to be honest, delayed charging is hit and miss because the set time window is not the only information that the car uses to decide whether to charge. It also uses the time of the charge window relative to the set departure time and the current state of charge.

Bill
 
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