So, my wife has been wanting a BMW i3 for her primary car for
quite some time now, but they're just too pricy
and we haven't been able to afford one, but
we managed to find this used 2014 model with only
3,000 miles (4,828 km) on it for $25,000.
So, it's almost brand new and it's like we got it half price!
Okay, so i've decided to create the ultimate i3 review.
Now, I'm not going to sit here and talk to you about cup holders or sun visors
I'll leave that to the professional reviewers.
But I'm going to tell you about the stuff you really want to know.
The BMW i3 comes in several different configurations
The first two are called B.E.V's which stands for
Battery Electric Vehicle
So, these are pure electric vehicles.
It comes with 2 battery sizes,
the 60 amp hour version, which is rated at
82 miles (132 km),
and the 94 amp hour version which is rated at
114 miles (183 km).
There is also the REx versions which stands for
range extender. These have a small 2 cylinder
motorcycle engine in the back for increased range.
It's easy to identify a REx model because it will have a gas door on the front fender
where the B.E.V model will not.
It is also available in both battery sizes and is rated at
72 and 97 miles (116 and 156 km) respectively.
The reason for the reduced range on the REx version
is due to the added weight, and also because it needs
to maintain a battery buffer when running on the range extender.
The REx adds an additional 78 or 83 miles (126 or 133 km) to these vehicles,
giving them a total driving range of 150 or 180 miles (241 or 290 km) respectively.
Now, we managed to buy the REx 60.
And so that's the vehicle I am going to be demonstrating
in this episode.
Now, you can't talk about a road trip in an electric vehicle without
talking about the charging options.
The i3 is pretty versatile, it can charge in 3 different ways:
The first way is by using a standard wall outlet, you'll get about
5 miles (8 km) of range for every hour of charging.
So a full charge would take around 16 hours,
or basically forever.
A level 2 charger makes a huge difference,
and you can expect around 25 miles (40 km) per hour,
or about 3 hours for a full charge.
The DC fast charger is even faster, although not all i3s
support DC fast charge, and if you're buying a used one
like we did, about the only way to tell is to open the
charge door and see if it has these two extra prongs
This is also one big advantage of the i3 over the
Chevrolet Volt, as it does not support fast charging at all.
If you read any of the opinions about the range extender
on this car on the internet, you'll see quite a few
different opinions:
"The REx is only good for limping home at 40 mph (64 km/h)!"
"That's not true!"
"You can drive as far as you want at any speed!"
So the truth is actually somewhere in between,
and that's what I'm going to show you today.
The really frustrating part about this whole thing is
that BMW purposefully crippled the range extender
for the US market.
Now, I'm not going to go into why, because it's a
long explanation, but if you want to read about it,
I'll put some information about that down in the description field.
The first thing they did, was to reduce the size
of the gas tank.
It's actually a 2.4 gallon (9.08 litre) tank, but the
computer has been re-programmed so that it can only
use 1.9 gallons (7.19 litres),
so once the fuel reaches this level,
the computer will insist that the car is out of gas,
even though it isn't.
The other thing they did is to remove the 'hold' mode,
which I'll explain that later.
But the good news is that it is fairly simple to get the get
the car coded so that these options are reset back to
the European configuration.
Christopher Roberts from 'NTX Coding' did our i3
for $150 and it took about half an hour.
[CHRISTOPHER] So these are all the different modules
that are in the car, and it's going to go in and test
each module, and it looks like we have 0 fault codes.
Two codes that you can program in, one is the tank..
the number of litres, and the other one is the resistance
of the sensor.
So we can change these here...
to be the 'not US version'...
...and that's it!
We can save the file..
..and code it in!
This gave us access to the full 2.4 gallon (9.08 litre) gas tank,
which bumped our total range up some,
and gave us the 'hold' mode back as well.
So, my in my Chevrolet Volt episode, I drove around
Dallas Fort Worth to test the range.
Since the i3 is so different I thought a longer trip
was in order.
So, my wife has been wanting to visit 'Magnolia Market'
in Waco, Texas.
Now, Waco is over 100 miles (160 km) from our home,
so while not a cross country trek, it's certainly a regional trip.
If you look at a map of charging stations in the area,
you'll notice there's almost nothing between
Fort Worth and Waco.
There's one station in Hillsboro, and a couple of stations
in Waco itself.
And if you look for only the high powered fast charging
stations, there are zero such stations.
And so, we're going to be driving into what I would call
an E.V. desert!
So, my wife loaded up the car and we also made sure to
include the portable 120 volt charge cable in case we
needed it.
And so off we went,
We drove 14 miles (22.5 km) in decided to stop in Burleson, Texas.
This is the southern most fast charger of the metroplex.
And our last charge before trying to cross the E.V. desert.
We weren't here very long as it didn't take long to
top off the battery.
After we were done there, we stopped just right down
the street at a gas station and topped off the
2.4 gallon (9.08 litre) tank in the car.
We also filled up a small 1 gallon (3.78 litre) gas can,
which fits really well in the fronk (front trunk) of the car.
That holds enough fuel to give us an additional
40 miles (64 km) of range if we need it.
So between the car and the can we bought
just barely over 2 gallons (7.57 litres) of gas.
So you can see the gas is full and battery is almost full.
So we left Burleson and Leslie is driving.
Trust me, you won't get any hypermiling out of her,
she drives the speed of traffic or faster.
And remember that driving at this speed will drastically
reduce the range you get on battery power.
So, travelling near 80 mph (130 km/h),
we started to leave civilisation.
And the sun was starting to set.
So we were definitely going to wind up driving in the dark.
We decided to stop in Hillsboro, and check out the
charging station there,
these are not fast chargers, so we didn't charge here,
We didn't want to sit here for like an hour just to
get some meaningful amount of charge.
But we thought we'd stop and have a look because
if we did not have the range extender in the car, we
would have to use these stations in order to make it
to our destination.
It appears that at least one of them is broken,
which is common with 'blink' stations
that's that they're always ON the blink!
So after leaving Hillsboro, it was dark, and we were still
heading out into the E.V desert.
We actually made it to around this point when our
battery ran out, and we switched over to the range extender.
So we managed 62 miles (100 km) of fast highway travel on a single charge,
and if you include the charge we got in Burleson, then
we travelled 76 miles (122 km) total on battery power.
The range extender took us another 25 miles (40 km)
to our hotel, it would have been less but
we missed our exit and had to go a few miles out
of our way.
Fortunately, this hotel was one of only two charging locations
in the entire city of Waco.
And, they had two Tesla destination chargers,
and one regular E.V charger.
So at this point we had 47 miles (76 km) left of gas and
no battery.
We travelled a total of 101 miles (163 km) from our house to the hotel.
When we got up in the morning, of course the car was
fully recharged.
Leslie took this opportunity to clean the bugs off the
winshield from the night before.
And we also accumulated quite a few bug guts on the
front nose of the car but we'll have to deal with those later.
The thing that I find odd is that after recharging the car
now gives a reading of 88 miles (142 km) of battery range,
but for some reason, the gas range has jumped from 47 mi (76 km)
to 59 mi (37 km)?
I realise both numbers are an estimate based on
driving style, but I wouldn't expect any of those
variables to change just from sitting in a parking
lot overnight.
Okay, so what would we have done had the charger
not been available - blocked by a gasoline car,
which is all too common.
Or just simply broken, well with this car we would have
two alternatives, one we could have used the
120 volt charger which we bought with us and found a wall outlet somewhere,
on a pole or a wall or something to plug it into.
Well it is slow, it would have given us a significant charge overnight.
The alternative is we could just use the range extender,
and deal with any limitations there might be with that.
So, believe it or not, it might actually be possible to use
one of these Tesla stations with an appropriate adapter,
Because these are not super chargers
these are really just regular 240 volt chargers,
they call them destination chargers.
And there is an adapter you can buy,
that will allow you to use this on any electric vehicle.
So when we left the hotel, we could finally see some of Waco.
And it's a much larger city than I thought.
They even have a huge stadium, and a big college,
but I also ran across this Goodwill store quite by accident,
now the funny thing about this is I watch
'Lazy Game Reviews' and how he goes thrifting in these
goodwill stores, and finds all kinds of goodies.
I do have some goodwill stores around my place,
but they're just full of clothes and dishes and other
junk but I thought "what the heck?"
Let's just take a look.
So there were of course racks full of junk as to be expected,
but I did see these two things that caught my eye,
I saw this keyboard by Fisher Price that actually
appears to connect to a televison,
and I was quite curious as to what it did and it was
only $10 so what the heck.
But I also found this vintage Casio keyboard for $10,
and by the way, it amazes me how many people don't
realise - I have another channel called '8 Bit Keys'
where I feature these vintage, used keyboards.
So if you haven't seen that, check out the link in the
description, I'm sure I'll be eventually doing episodes
on both these things that I picked up.
We also passed by the Dr Pepper museum,
which is apparently the original birth place of the soft
drink.
And there's even a museum you can go inside and see
the old bottling plant.
Anyway, here's the magnolia market, this is what
Leslie came to see, and she signed the guest book,
but, man was this place crowded!
And to be honest, I can't see what the appeal is of this place,
There's nothing in here I would want even if it were free,
but I guess I'm not the target customer.
And there's no way we were going to wait in this line just to go in the bakery.
Speaking of bakerys, we stopped at a Tesla charging station,
now there's no way these stations will ever work with
either of our electric cars,
but it's still cool to see.
And somebody's here charging up their Tesla.
And they put this station in Waco because it's a halfway
point between Austin and Dallas, so it's a good place
to recharge, and it's next to a 'Collon Street Bakery' and
guess what? There's no huge line here to wait in!
So, on the way home, we decided to try out the new
'hold' mode.
That's one of the features that we got re-instated with
the coding. And we got to see exactly how that works.
So you can't actually engage it until you get below 75%
state of charge, so you'll see the option is greyed out right now.
But once you do, you can turn it on and the little
two cylinder motorcycle engine will spring to life.
Now, when travelling at the speeds we're going,
the engine simply can't provide enough power to
sustain that.
But since the battery is still 75%, there's plenty of extra power to draw on,
so, take a look at this screenshot and you'll see
we have 37 miles (60 km) of gas and 53 miles (85 km) of battery.
This little white arrow is supposed to indicate where you
are holding the charge, but after driving at high speed,
you'll notice the gas dropped to 4 miles (6.4 km), which is to be expected,
but, also the battery has lost some power as well.
That's because at 80 mph (130 km/h), it has to pull a
little bit from the battery to sustain that speed.
It actually felt a little weird being out in the middle of
nowhere in an electric vehicle, I mean, we were still
quite a long way from any civilisation.
However, we did stop off at a Texas highway rest stop,
I don't know about any other states, but Texas has these
placed all down the interstates, usually in the middle of
nowhere.
And they have rest rooms and a gazillion vending machines
But, what they could really do with is some E.V chargers.
If anyone in the Texas legislator is listening to this,
we need E.V chargers at these places.
Oh, and here's what the range extender sounds like
when it's running.
*LOUD ENGINE*
So we ran out of gas around this point, we could have
stopped and filled up from our little can, but it appeared
we had enough E.V range to make it all the way home.
So we just went straight there, we didn't even stop at
the fast charger in Burleson.
And we did make it home with 16 miles (26 km) remaining.
Since I have no use to keep a can of gas around the house,
I went ahead and poured the gas into the car where we
can use it some other time.
So, we drove over 200 miles (322 km) in total for this trip,
and even if we had not been able to charge in Waco,
for whatever reason, we still could have made the trip
back with just using the range extender.
Although granted, our top speed might have been
limited to around 70-75 mph (112-120 km).
But that wouldn't have killed us.
So, one last thing. I did release an early copy of this
video to some of my screeners, and it was pointed out
to me that it's probably not a good idea to encourage
people to put a tank of gas in the fronk of the car,
because apparently, it's part of the crumple zone of the
car and could be dangerous in an accident.
Just thought I should point that out.
Okay, so I should mention that if we had the i3
with the larger battery pack, we could have actually
made this trip without using the range extender at all.
Now, I will mention that Waco is probably as far
as I would ever want to drive, at least here in Texas.
Without having a range extender because we do have
such a limited charging infastructure.
So, one obvious question that I should probably address
is the Chevrolet Bolt E.V
It's not on the market at the time of this video,
but I think it will be the largest competitor to the i3
in the near term.
With 238 miles (383 km) of range, it could have made
the whole trip to Waco and back on a single charge.
And it would be cheaper than the i3.
So, believe it or not, we were actually waiting on the Bolt
E.V - that's actually what my wife wanted to buy,
but we came across this i3 at roughly half the price
and we thought it was a good deal, so we bought that
instead.
And to be honest, even though the Bolt has alot
more E.V range, there is still no way, at least today
that you can drive a Bolt E.V from Dallas to Houston.
There's no charging infastructure between here and there,
but we could do that with the i3.
So I will be doing a follow up or a part two of this
episode where i'm going to take this i3 to the drag strip,
and race my Volt, so stick around for that.
And then after that it will be back to our regularly
scheduled programming on vintage electronics,
stick around.
Subtitles by: Max Attley
www.lolcom.net
Total subtitle writing time: 4 hours.