What Car? BMW i3 long-termer

Hi all,

Just thought I'd say hello and introduce myself. I'm the editor of What Car? and we've just taken delivery of our i3 range-extender long-term test vehicle. We're going to run the REX for six months, then switch over to a pure electric version for at least another couple of months, just to compare the experience.

I may post a link to our coverage of the car (if that's allowed here?) - the 'Hello', including full specs and first impressions, will appear on our website later in the week. But just to summarise, we're running a Laurus Grey REX with turbine style 428 19in wheels and Interior World Loft. We've gone with BMW's suggested options, which are pretty extensive!

19" BMW i bicolour light alloy wheels turbine styling 428 with mixed tyres - £680.00
Adaptive LED headlights - £710.00
BMW Professional Navigation - No cost
Comfort Access - £330.00
DC Rapid Charge preparation - £560.00
Driving Assistant Plus - £790.00
Electric Glass Sunroof - £780.00
Enhanced Bluetooth telephone with USB - £430.00
Information Plus - £215.00
Laurus Grey metallic - £530.00
Loudspeaker System - Harman Kardon - £640.00
Traffic Jam Assist - No cost

Interior World Loft comprising - £1,000.00
Multi-function steering wheel, Pearl with contrast white accent
Interior Trim: Grained foil finish
Velour floor mats, Carum Grey

Park Assist Package comprising - £790.00
Reversing Assist Camera
Park Distance Control
Park Assist

Winter Package comprising - £260.00
Seat heating for front driver and passenger seats
Pre-heating of HV battery with Active air flap control

Total list price of our car, including delivery/registration fees, is £41,545.

Interested to hear what any other owners, particularly UK-based people, have gone for on their car? We may even look at doing a 'meet-up' that we could make a story out of, comparing experiences, if people were interested?

Kind regards to all,

John

Well, I've had mine[1] just over a week and am loving it - despite having got the spec wrong, I think.

I'm not convinced the Bluetooth enhancement actually adds a great deal of functionality if you have the Pro Nav. And I'm coming to the conclusion that DC Prep and REx are a daft combo (it just seemed silly not to have fast charge on an EV). In retrospect, I should have spent the wonga on the enhanced sound system as the basic doesn't even have speakers in the back (sounds OK in the front, though).

However, it's a brilliant car - my first BMW and my first EV.

[1] Solar Orange, REx, Leather trim (whatever that's called), Winter pack, Pro Nav (FOC), Enhanced Bluetooth, DC Prep. I think that's it.

Hi John,

I've been following you on twitter and looking at your pics of the i3 so look forward to your updates over the next few months (@johnmcilroy for anyone interested).

I was supposed to collect my i3 REx at the weekend but it's been delayed for a few days. It's not too bad because I've been given one of the dealer's i3's to drive around in the meantime

For my spec, I went with

REx
Arravani Grey
428 19" wheels
LED lights
Suite interior
Winter Package
Driving Assistant Plus
Park Assist
Pro-Nav
Harman Kardon Audio

That's actually quite different to my initial spec where I went with metallic paint, 20" wheels & tints but having learnt about the Driving Assistant Plus benefits I decided to forgo the aesthetic upgrades and to spend the money saved on the DAP and upgraded interior (as DAP is not possible with the standard interior unfortunately).

Park assist was mainly for the front sensors rather than the trick of it auto-parking (which I doubt I'll use much).

I have zero interest in public charging (unless it's very convenient, such as when parked at a shopping centre) so I did not spec the DC rapid charge. I'll be charging from home and then on the occasional longer journeys will be using the REx.

I've also bought a set of winter tyres which are fitted to the standard 427 alloys for the winter months.

Total purchase cost was way more than I'd normally spend on a new car but when I looked at the tax efficiencies of purchasing the car through my LTD company and also included the savings from the £5k government incentive and cheaper running/fuel costs over several years it all made good financial sense. That's the plan anyway.....

Hi John

Here are the options I went with, delivery is expected very soon.

All electric
-Arravani Grey with BMW i Blue highlight
-Interior world, Suite
-Park assist package
-Winter package
-19" BMW i Turbine-spoke style 428 alloy wheels
-Cold weather cabin preparation
-DC Rapid Charge preparation
-Adaptive LED headlights
+ thrown in for ordering before Feb
-Navigation system Professional
-Real Time Traffic Information

Regards

Bill

Thanks for the, er, plug to the Twitter account, er, Plug!

Interesting to see a few others have gone for 428 Turbine style on 19s. I've tried the i3 on both 19s and 20s and I reckon it's firm enough on the smaller of those two - especially over the big potholes and road scars that we tend to have in the UK.

First week with the car is progressing well. I'm just working out the balance of charging it at the office (32A) and how that's going to fit in with my commute - which is a bit of urban at either end of about 20 miles of M3 motorway. Adds up to a round 60 miles every day - which seems to be about the limit of what the i3 will allow me in Comfort mode (and including what I'll loosely term a fast motorway cruise)...

Kind regards to all,

John

Here's a picture of our car, incidentally.

Hi,
I picked my car up on Monday and my first impressions are very positive, still finding my way around but I do find it a very pleasant environment, it is very hard to convey in words but I actually think it makes me a better driver, it encourages you to anticipate and drive smoothly and when you get it right it is really rewarding. It really is a marmite car and gets very mixed opinion, some people really don't get it and some love it.

My Spec is as follows
i3 Rex (Flexibility, don't plan on using it much but it allows me to be flexible and not worry)
Pro Navigation (no cost)
Laurus Grey (It was the car that I saw on the roadshow and I am very happy with it)
World Suite (Quality of finish really is very good)
Turbine 428 Wheels (Very nice)
DC Rapid Charge (Bit of future proofing and if ecotricity get the chargers in place it really does open possibilities)
Sunroof
Sun Protection Glass (So my kids could hide from their friends - marmite car )
Driving Assistant Plus - My treat
Internet - why not
Winter Package - I like heated seats
Park Assist Package - Camera is fantastic and self parking, well let's just say when you have a car that a few hours old and it self parks, steering, brakes and everything it takes real self control not to dab the brakes as you get inches away from the car in front, but keep the faith - it really works

So far I am happy with my spec and don't regret anything but wish I had specified the Harman Kardon as it gets really good feedback - BUT I had ticked nearly all the boxes and something had to go :roll:
I had the British Gas 30amp Charger put in at home and they did a great job, no fuss or hassle.

I have to say a big thanks to all at this forum as I learnt so much about the car which really helped and made the wait more enjoyable.

Kind Regards

Jon

Interesting you mention Ecotricity there; our car obviously has the DC charging prep as well, but has anyone actually used this with Ecotricity points? Their site doesn't list the i3 as being compatible with their DC posts, but I'm guessing that's because DC charging is optional on the BMW?

Regards to all,

John

I have a nigh on fully loaded i3 ordered and should be arriving end of march, I wanted to touch upon the enhanced Bluetooth which I have only just cancelled. It seemed that many owners were getting full control of mobile functions without the premium. Some say that the package might have been added for free with the proffesional navigation? I have gambled and hope that I will only miss out on art work and streaming.
Would like to get some feedback about this of possible.

Ordered ordered on the 8th Jan and my spec is in the signature below.

Delivery date is still in the air, originally June 23rd delivery, however this keeps moving around was June, Sept and July last week!?

Added Heat pump and Harman Kardon after initial order due to forum reading!

johnmcilroy said:

Interesting you mention Ecotricity there; our car obviously has the DC charging prep as well, but has anyone actually used this with Ecotricity points? Their site doesn't list the i3 as being compatible with their DC posts, but I'm guessing that's because DC charging is optional on the BMW?

Click to expand...

The Ecotricity rapid charging points are all currently incompatible with the i3 because they use a different connector standard called CHAdeMO which is the Japanese spec as used by Nissan, Mitsubishi, Renault, etc. They have said that they plan to introduce the CCS rapids (Euro spec used by BMW, VW etc) "during the next 12 months at selected sites".

Chargemaster have also got plans to introduce CCS rapid chargers and the first few have just been installed this month. Locations shown in this article.

The difference is that the Ecotricity rapids are currently free to use whereas Chargemaster are introducing a tariff which comes into effect on 1st April. This means that a charge is going to cost up to £8.50 per 30 mins which is pretty expensive. Some people are reporting that the new chargers aren't even getting to 80% in 30 mins so it'll cost double that if you want a full charge. Ouch !

BoMW said:

I wanted to touch upon the enhanced Bluetooth which I have only just cancelled. Would like to get some feedback about this if possible.

Click to expand...

Have you seen this thread ? Probs best off discussed in there ?

Thanks for that, Plug. It is hugely frustrating how the manufacturers haven't been able to agree common charging principles and sockets; kind of like the early days of video recorders, with VHS/Betamax - but with the potential cost implications for the end user scaled up a bit.

I've registered for Source London (£10) and Ecotricity (free) - plus our car has a ChargeNow card already in there (BMW are partners, so I guess they're keen to push that one). Does anyone else have a good charging scheme that they've found?

I'm currently only charging the i3 at work, although that's mainly because my garage power socket seemed to die over the winter (power surge during the storms, most likely). I'll be charging at both ends of my journey within a week or two, I think.

This morning I elected to not 'hold charge' and just relied on the system itself cutting in to stop me from grinding to a halt. Worked well - although seeing the range getting down to 2 miles when you're halfway up the M3 takes a deep breath and a bit of faith…

I've not yet tested the auto-turn on threshold - and am a bit wary of doing so! I know that's how it's designed to work so I really ought to steel myself next time I have a long run and let it do its stuff.

Yeah, I know what you mean. It is definitely heart-in-mouth territory. I'll be honest - I knocked the car back to Eco Pro mode because I remember from the launch that when we drove quickly in Comfort mode it couldn't *quite* maintain charge levels. Didn't think the M3 was the place to put that theory to the test again…

That's interesting, hadn't realised you could prevent the REx coming on automatically when the battery gets down to 18% or whatever the threshold is (on EU cars) but it makes sense to allow an override if the driver knows the battery level is sufficient to get home or to the next charge point. Until you post I had assumed the REx would kick in and stay in but wondered whether the power management would revert to electric just before reaching a dry tank.

All I can say is that the threshold for cut-in is considerably less than 18%!

John, you've got a good opportunity here to be the first auto mag/website to clearly explain how the REx functions at low battery levels using real world data. I hope you take it, sounds like you will

Despite the REx cars being available to the UK press since November there hasn't yet been a review of the car that has gone into it in this detail. BMW have said that the REx will maintain battery charge on a level road at speeds of up to 75mph. What also needs to be explained is that if you want to power up motorway hills at high speed then you will need to leave some battery charge in reserve (i.e. don't just run the battery to empty and then turn on the REx expecting it to cope).

Plug,

I'll also be able to explain how an i3 can end up on 0.0% battery charge, and what happens when it ends up like that. And that's through experience. Already. As in, Monday morning just gone!

Regards to all,

John

We picked up our i3 Rex yesterday, a birthday present for my wife.
Spec. is andesit silver, lodge. 427 wheels, DC charging, winter package, parking asst, driving asst., prof. nav., sun roof.
My wife drove the car home (35 miles), was very pleased with it and hardly touched the brake at all. Sun roof was really useful, tilted open for ventilation on the first sunny day of the year here. The i genius was outstanding in delivery of the car, covering all controls and every item in the i drive sub menus. Spent over 3 hours with us.
We can now convince our kids that their parents have actually joined the 21 st century.

RJSATLBA said:

That's interesting, hadn't realised you could prevent the REx coming on automatically when the battery gets down to 18% or whatever the threshold is (on EU cars) but it makes sense to allow an override if the driver knows the battery level is sufficient to get home or to the next charge point. Until you post I had assumed the REx would kick in and stay in but wondered whether the power management would revert to electric just before reaching a dry tank.

Click to expand...

AIUI, the REx will automatically fire up at around 5% - there's a little triangle mark on the "battery bar" on the instrument cluster that indicates the point. There's nothing I can find in the settings to change that auto-start point.

What you can do is, at any point below 75%, manually fire up the REx and it will "hold charge" at whatever level you've started it at. I've noticed the electric range going up and down by a couple of miles around that point but it remains broadly steady. I've set programmable button 8 to start/stop the REx. If I have a long trip I try to use the REx early and arrive at my destination with minimal electricity and recharge there. Ideally, I'll have timed it so I can refuel the petrol at some point - thus always leaving home with two full "tanks".

I have two worries about the 5% (or it maybe less) auto-start point. Firstly just the "will it work" worry! As it's a brand new car, crafted by Bavarian robots, and the manual start always works, this is probably an unnecessary worry. The second worry is whether the minimal electric charge is sufficient a "buffer" between power generated and power demanded. As I said, with the REx running, the electric range does fluctuate by +/- a couple of miles. With a tiny buffer, *minus* a couple of miles could well be zero. Or less! What happens then?

Of course, I need to experiment. That's the point of being an early adopter (practically a beta tester, really). And I will summon up the courage in the next couple of weeks! Unless our fearless motoring journo publishes something scary beforehand.

I do wonder why BMW have set it only to hold charge. If you're pootling along there must be enough power to actually rebuild some charge. This would be nice - otherwise I envisage a long, long trip with multiple petrol stops (ie well outside the sensible use of an i3) resulting in a slow decline in charge until you're hopping from petrol station to petrol station in 50 mile jumps.