Welcome back everybody Mark with Exotic Car Play Place today coming back at you
in front of one of the dealers here in Edmonton and I just want to have a quick
look at some of the electric cars so here you've noticed behind me we've got
some cars we've got a couple of the i3s which are pretty much straight electric
with a range extender and they have an i8 in the shop as well and I want to
talk about some of the details on both of those cars but I also today want to
share with you some of the issues that these cars have been having to date
generally speaking talking to some owners checking it out checking the
forums and talking to owners of some of these cars and some of the preliminary
issues although these cars are new to the market relatively since about 2013
or 2014 there are some issues that do pop up from time to time and I want to
share that with you guys I three and the i8 issues today let's go
Wow what a beautiful thing so there's the i8 and there's the i3s of course
we've got two of them parked out here and so some of the issues that we've
seen let's get started with what these actually are so so both of these cars
these basically are in the i3 which happens to be pretty much the third
best-selling of pure electric car on the market today it's been created since
about 2013 until present is when these basically have been coming into service
2013 till now and what these really are is a more or less a pure electric car
and there's an optional range assist so you can get a small engine basically
from a scooter that they drop into these things that give you an additional range
but pure electric alone pretty much these things are pushing about 170
horsepower at about a hundred and eighty-four
foot-pounds of torque with the range extender of course you can get an
additional 320 kilometers out of that which is literally that it's just an
extender stop meant to be part of the normal function of the vehicle and of
course as you can see they have four doors and four seats typically in these
cars and the rear doors you look here
you've actually got the back doors but these are suicide doors so that the back
doors actually flip open reverse so again the hinges are at the back instead
of at the front on the back doors and of course you get the back seats capable
for four commuting in comfort now this vehicle can be 0 to 60 in under 8
seconds now I know that doesn't sound phenomenally fast by today's standards
at 8 seconds up 100 kilometers an hour but it was just yesterday when I had a
Mazda rx-7 well a bunch of years ago I had an rx-7 mine was in 1988 and I was
excited because that car was so quick to me at the time it did 0 to 60 around
eight eight and a half seconds and this car will do the same thing and I always
thought the rx-7 was quite sporty so these here are not really hurting for
performance eight seconds to 100 kilometers an hour not a bad
acceleration rate for sure by any means and if you look around of course they
have a lot of the nice features we've got LED LED headlights they're pretty
attractive color schemes with a lot of these cars of course if you look you
have the cute little signals on the side signal lights typical BMW handles of
course and attractive wheel package however that's a discussion here we'll
get to in a moment idrive a very all overly attractive vehicle for what it is
nice tucked away lighting this is actually quite quite an interesting
design theme I've got this nice little overhang almost like what you'd get on
most of all so there SUV and a lot of interesting very
interesting styling elements the interior is also one of the other great
parts of this I mean you've got really nice seating in here the dash layouts
pretty attractive as well the car actually has a lot of great elements to
it both design and functionality wise very very attractive little cars here
for sure no doubt and of course the blue theme here but that's just for color
clothes lots of different color themes available for these cars now that brings
us to the next discussion so with these cars do you know what kind of issues
you're having number one first you know these doors super lightweight
everything's made to be lightweight these doors are a combination of plastic
and hemp fibers so you can actually see it on the door panel there dot there is
plastic and hemp fibers right there that is intended to shed a ton of weight so
they're doing a lot of things here not just for the drivetrain which is pure
electric with range extender as I mentioned before but they're shaving
weight in a lot of places but that is where one of the issues is these wheels
very soft sidewalls those things are more like an RV or a trailer tire
they're very flimsy very lightweight but all for the point of reducing rolling
resistance and shedding weight so BMW did a lot of things to shed weight but
the problem was those had created some problems along the way some of which
were easy flats and of course this has no run flats because those are just a
really really lightweight tire and there's also no spare so that was one
complaint people were having no spares you get a flat tire because and they
were going flat very easily and that was a big issue with a lot of people I mean
look at the look at the width of that tire
pretty flimsy I might say and then another issue that people were
complaining was the range now this is meant to be a mass city vehicle so the
intent of these to be used for is city driving commuting within city limits
typically but you know how it is in North America you know I'm in Canada
everything's spread out quite far and people that wind up buying these often
try to push their luck and unfortunately the concept is great but if you're
trying to take this out on the highway or the freeways you often find yourself
limited and there's been cases where people they're out there they run off
the electric is going goes quickly because you're climbing some big Hills
it eats the batteries very quickly drops you down into the assist mode trying to
get you going but as soon as you do that you lose your battery power often these
things will drop down to about 40 miles per hour and you can't even keep up with
freeway traffic that in itself was creating hazards something that BMW is
still working out in the wash but it has been a bit of an issue for these cars so
if you don't mind just knowing that these are more or less you to be
utilized as a city vehicle that's fine but don't try to make it a once and done
vehicle that you're gonna take this across the highway and travel long
distances across the country with it it's not really the vehicle for that
this is a shorter term commuter vehicle and so that brings us to the other
vehicle the i8 which is different it's not strictly electrical this is actually
a plug-in hybrid vehicle it has a different way of managing its power
output
so these were created from about 2014 and on and this has a combination of
both a 228 horsepower 3 cylinder turbo engine and it's combined with a 120
horsepower hybrid synchronous motor as well coupled to that so this thing is
rated on pretty much just the gas only so assuming your batteries are toast
we'll get you 29 miles per gallon with the turbo 3 cylinder or a combined
electric gas combination fuel economy equivalent to about 91 miles per gallon
II and did you know this will also do 120 kilometres an hour on electric only
or it will actually do a limited 250 kilometres an hour when you're doing a
combined electric gas operation now unfortunately there have been a few
issues with these in terms of you know customer satisfaction things like
coolant leaks its overheating issues or coolant related problems window
regulators there's also been issues on the regen system or in some of the
wiring associated with some of the regeneration power but generally as a
rule aside from some of the basic electrical issues window regulators and
some of the coolant problems most customers seem to be quite happy with
the overall with the overall performance and the nice thing is this car generally
answers a lot of questions for a lot of people you've got fuel economy but
you've got your performance you've got some interesting doors wonderful
interior exotic stance and it's just a magnificent beautiful car overall so it
does really answer needs for a lot of different owners so overall it's been
very very reliable and I would expect good things from the i8 so far so good
as well as the i3 so generally I would say so far so good
BMW is almost leading the way in terms of technology with this they're not the
first on the block but they're selling a lot of the i3 s as a pure electric
possibly with the range extender as an option a lot of people are liking those
vehicles they're providing a lot of reliable transportation other than if
you the little things that I spoke of and the I ate answers all the questions
for that exotic appeal it gives you that exclusiveness that most other BMWs don't
match I mean it's it puts it out there even above and beyond the m5s and that
it just has that look and that exotic feel to it in in itself has been quite
reliable like I said some coolant issues window regulators little one-off issues
some owners complaining about accelerated tire wear I would say a lot
of that has to do with because the tires are generally skinnier than you're going
to find on a lot of vehicles and of course if you're driving the car hard
it's gonna eat those tires pretty quickly so that's about the only other
thing that was really noted and talking to people there's not a lot of bad
problems with these cars so these electric or hybrid vehicles by BMW have
been actually very very reliable so everybody I hope you enjoyed the video
make sure you give me a thumbs up like and of course share with your friends
I'd like you guys to pass this on overall I think the i3 and the i8 are
spectacular cars they're great they answer a lot of solutions for fuel
economy and that's BMWs look into the future what the future holds for the
automotive industry after all with fossil fuels and the challenges
associated with building pipelines and the the increased need for alternative
fuels this is a great option and BMW is on board with it and they're trying a
lot of things I three I eight and so far the reliability of these vehicles looks
to be very very good so everybody I hope you enjoyed the video make sure you give
it a thumbs up like and don't forget to subscribe to the channel I'd love to see
you guys on the next one see you soon talk to that bye bye
you