I am a new i3 owner with no experience of running the car. However on a run today I noticed that for every mile I travelled range left decreased by two miles. Am I missing something. I was driving moderately along B roads across country. Any views welcome.
Range
- Thread starter Reg
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Range is very much a function of your driving, I find that pottering around in London traffic I might end my journey with 2 or 3 miles more in store than when I started. On the other hand motorway driving gobbles up the miles.
Don't worry, once the car 'learns' your driving style it will be much more accurate at displaying the estimated range.
And, most importantly, enjoy the car and welcome to the forum.
my understanding was bmw i3 was a money loser for each car built, and the market demand didn't see the opportunity to raise the price to at least a break even, in fact the opposite, as a two time owner of i3, first was a 2017 that at 187,000k had lots of issues with computer chips, and the battery was down to110k when fully charge, opportunity came for me to trade for a 2019i3, that had 360k range, so i took a beating on the trade in, and took the 2019 model i3, just over3 years later, up to 104,000k and now i can only get 305k range, so taking a beating on the range now, my wife got the i4 model and so far is thrilled with the performance, i probably will move in the next year to the i4 myself,
I find it helpful to remember what the car shows you is not your range, it's your car's ESTIMATE of your range. It is affected by a large number of things. Let's say you live at a slightly lower altitude than the places you go. The downhill of driving on your way home took less power per mile. Your car thinks it can do more miles per Kwh. Then you set out the next day with and optimistic range estimate, but now it's going uphill which take a lot more energy. It will keep downgrading that range estimate until it thinks it's getting it right. If you put your destination into the GPS, it will factor in the elevation change and highway speed into it's range estimate.
At one point during the i3's production run, I believe that BMW announced that the i3 had become profitable so that money was not lost on each one produced. Of course, there are several ways to calculate profit, so we don't really know how BMW accounted for its significant i3 R&D expenses, some of which could be allocated to other BMW EV's and those with CFRP panels.
Yours is one of the only reports I've read of significant 94 Ah or 120 Ah battery cell degradation. All battery cells lose capacity over time and use. It's not easy to determine how much usable capacity has been lost. Assuming that your range loss is accurate, a 15% loss in usable capacity over 140k km isn't terrible. Recurrent Auto monitors the range of thousands of EV's including our 2021 i3. Based on other 120 Ah i3's, Recurrent estimates that our i3 has lost 6% of its new range in its first 3 years and predicts that it will lose another 13% of its range in the next 3 years, so the range loss of your i3 seems pretty normal.
It also appears that after the initial range loss up to 20%, the rate of detoriation becomes less, I read that somewhere.
DavHo Hid
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- Jun 2, 2024
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I did not know that. Is there any documentation or other source of information regarding this? I live towards the top of a hill so receive significantly differing estimates depending on whether I have just driven to or from my home.🤔
Hopefully you will get used to it and gain confidence that you can guess your range yourself, depending on the destination. If you do a little planning upfront, things get easier on the mind. There is a reason recent EV's get bigger battery packs with more range, even if it is not neccesary in general.
I think the most erroneous assumptions about range estimates in EVs is that they are pessimistic like ICE range meters. The Ford Flex I sold always predicted fewer miles than were actually left in the tank. The gauge would still read empty, but never actually ran it out of gas as the negative numbers started. 
I can't think of a specific document. Might just be what I have seen the car do.
Gonville
Well-known member
As far as we know the GOM is calculated from a number of factors:
- Current state of charge
- Current outside temperature (on starting)
- Battery residual temperature (has it been on charge or a journey)
- Consumption mi/kWh over the last 18 miles driven (i.e. speed)
- Average consumption over last 5 journeys
- Terrain profile to destination (if selected in the navigation)
- Road type to destination (motorway, fast A road or B road)
- Drive mode
- Selected Fan speed
- Selected internal temperature
- Season (algorithm changes with clock changes - watch out winter)
(Did I leave anything out?)
