Got mine!

[Jeremy]

My Andesite Silver Rex arrived last night.

I'd never seen the colour before - but it looks nice. More bronze than silver really.

Everything seems to work although the Germanic inscrutability of the handbook is a bit heavy going.

I managed to immobilise myself for 15 mins doing the door/brake/select okey-cokey - despite having driven a demo for half a day.

One thing puzzled me about charging. When I put it on charge last night, the driver's display showed charge finishing at 1.00am. This doesn't seem to be selectable - so I'm guessing it's just the car's estimate of when full charge will be reached.

In that case, if you want to go easy on the battery by only regularly charging to (say) 70% - is there any way of pre-setting that?

I also haven't fathomed out the intelligent cruise control and traffic queue following systems yet. Are there two separate independent functions or do you need to select cruise control before trying to lock on to a vehicle. The manual is voluble on the topic but magnificently incomprehensible to me ;-)

I haven't got my password for the iPhone app yet - but the phone synched and transferred contacts instantly, which never happened so seamlessly in my old Lexus.

So far - so good!

 

[noakey]

Hey congratulations.. Another i3 goes to its new home. .. I have no idea of the answers to your questions just wanted to say yeeeaahhh...

Also my delivery date which moved from April to June is now April again... yeee

Have a good day.. neil

 

[ecoangel]

You can set up the charging so it's ready when you want it to go. It's part of the pre conditioning menu.

 

[Bunter]

Don't forget that the i3 does not use all it's available battery pack and a full charge is approx 80 % of the battery capacity.

Over the last 2 weeks of playing about with mine, when you are on the off peak charging setting I think the i3 tries to get the battery fully charged for your next departure time. To do that it uses the current state of charge, the timing of the off peak window, the departure time and the charge rate setting to decide if that is possible. It will default to charging if there's any doubt.

So, immediate charging aside, getting it to charge when you want seems to be non-trivial to me.

Bill

 

[BoMW]

My Andesite Silver Rex
I also haven't fathomed out the intelligent cruise control and traffic queue following systems yet. Are there two separate independent functions or do you need to select cruise control before trying to lock on to a vehicle. The manual is voluble on the topic but magnificently incomprehensible to me ;-)

I haven't got my password for the iPhone app yet - but the phone synched and transferred contacts instantly, which never happened so seamlessly in my old Lexus.

So far - so good!

Congratulations! I am keen to know your order date and whether you had any delays?
Did you also opt for the enhanced Bluetooth? If not do you know if you are able to read/send text messages?
Cheers

 

[Jeremy]

Thanks for the suggestions - but my problem is that, being a retired old fart, most of my journeys are unplanned spur-of-the-moment
trips. Since I don't know when I'll decide to jump in the car - I can't plan a charging & preconditioning cycle in advance.

I'm just a bit worried that leaving the car hooked up and 100 charged (i.e. 80% of max battery capacity) most of the time might shorten the battery life. There doesn't seem any way of setting a lower charge level - or switching it off early with the remote app. Or have a missed something?

I finally got the cruise control locked onto the car in front in heavy traffic today. It worked most of the time - but on a couple of occasions, the car in front pulled away and my car just sat immobile - even though it showed the little orange car symbol on the driver's display. Anybody else seen that?

I only have the basic bluetooth and it synched and transferred my contacts seamlessly - but I haven't tried texting yet.

I'll have a go and report back.

One thing have noticed is that it will be quite easy to damage the wheels on high kerbs because the tyres are very slim and almost flush with the wheel flange. I slightly scrubbed a tyre parking today and went perilously close to scuffing the alloy - beware!

 

[Jeremy]

BTW BoMw - I paid my deposit mid October and delivery was pretty well as confirmed after the November launch. I think it may have slipped by a week or two.

 

[noakey]

See my notes below... the delivery has changed a few times, and I await my new arrival...

 

[Jeremy]

BoMW

I can't see any way of seeing or sending texts with the basic bluetooth - unless I'm missing something (quite possible given the nightmare illogicality of iDrive).

 

[jgetz]

Thanks for the suggestions - but my problem is that, being a retired old fart, most of my journeys are unplanned spur-of-the-moment
trips. Since I don't know when I'll decide to jump in the car - I can't plan a charging & preconditioning cycle in advance.

I'm just a bit worried that leaving the car hooked up and 100 charged (i.e. 80% of max battery capacity) most of the time might shorten the battery life. There doesn't seem any way of setting a lower charge level - or switching it off early with the remote app. Or have a missed something?

I finally got the cruise control locked onto the car in front in heavy traffic today. It worked most of the time - but on a couple of occasions, the car in front pulled away and my car just sat immobile - even though it showed the little orange car symbol on the driver's display. Anybody else seen that?

I only have the basic bluetooth and it synched and transferred my contacts seamlessly - but I haven't tried texting yet.

I'll have a go and report back.

One thing have noticed is that it will be quite easy to damage the wheels on high kerbs because the tyres are very slim and almost flush with the wheel flange. I slightly scrubbed a tyre parking today and went perilously close to scuffing the alloy - beware!

Jeremy,

My understanding from talking with a "Genius" at a recent driving event, is that you can't "overcharge" the battery. When the battery is charged to the optimal level, it will cut off the charge. In his words, "BMW has thought of everything, when it comes to the batteries." We'll see how true that is. I live in South Texas, where the Summer temperatures are normally in the high-90's to low 100's, and heat-induced battery fatigue and degradation are a big concern of mine.

Also, it was explained to me that you can't fully discharged your batteries. If your car has flat out died, the batteries still retain a 10% charge to continue to power the various electrical underpinnings of the car.