Regen braking can be dangerous on icy roads

Let's face it...ice on the road is dangerous regardless of the vehicle you're in. One day, long ago, I was driving from Frankfurt Germany to a little town where I lived about 100 miles southwest of there, and I must have seen 20 cars off of the road. I had an outside temperature gauge (not common for that time) and I could see that it was going from 33 to 32 as I was going up most hills (more than once), and when it hit 32, there were cars off of the road. I didn't have any issues, and this was in a Mustang, V8 without winter tires, but people with more common ones and winter tires were off of the road. Anticipating the potential problems and adjusting your driving is critical for the situation if you want to progress as safely as possible. Outfitting the car with the best tires helps, and can make the difference between downright dangerous to squirrely. This is worse for people that don't see those conditions often. For example, you don't hear from people that live in Sweden or Norway (where the car sells quite well if I read things right) complaining, at least I haven't...might be an anomaly.

Snow is easier to drive in than ice will ever be...there, you might get stuck, but may not slide off the road as easily. There's a reason why most newer cars pop up a warning when the temperature is low.

brorob said:

jadnashuanh said:

The car could even alert the driver when beginning a journey based on the built in weather app. "Roads may be slippery, would you like to engage Winter Regen mode?"

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Good idea.

I have had good luck on ice and snow.

However, I would also like to turn off the regen.
It would make my driving easier.

Any suggestions?
Future change in the software?

All in all, the i3 is a pretty good foul weather car.

This is a legitimate post. I have a 2014 i3. The car is awesome, of course, but on slippery winter roads, the car gets confused, even when on-throttle while cruising. The car will slip (yaw) one way (counter clockwise, for example), and then try to correct. This will cause the car to over-correct and slip (yaw) in the clockwise direction. I have driven for many kilometers with the i3 constantly 'tank-slapping' in a minor, but extremely scary manner.

It's dangerous, and can't be easily corrected for at the steering wheel (a correction by the driver causes a double over correction in the car's yaw rate). A typical rear-wheel drive car doesn't do this. It is likely due to the way in which torque is sent to the wheels in traction-control situations. The regen issue is slightly different, and BMW has programmed the i3 to stop regenerating when the rear wheels slip, which is a solution of sorts for that issue. There is nothing, however, that stops the i3 from over correcting under throttle on slippery roads.

jadnashuanh said:

YOu, as the driver, have ultimate control of the amount of regen used by the position of the accelerator pedal. It is not hard to coast or adjust the amount of regenerative braking to help avoid those situations.

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I don't think his ask is unreasonable... to be able to turn off or reduce regen as an option via a button or setting is perfectly reasonable. There are times that it gets tiring constantly modulating the throttle.

Try it in roller mode! Lack of ABS is likely to send you back, but at least you could confirm that regen is the issue