craig1410
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| posted on 22/2/17 at 07:53 PM |
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quote:
Originally posted by rm0rgan
Craig, so how are you getting on with your i3?
I picked mine up last week and have covered 1000 miles so far and absolutely loving it. Still waiting to have my charge point fitted at home but
getting by with the OUC for now. Not a day goes by when I don't find a new feature or something that makes me go Oooooo.
Longest trip so far was Ross on Wye to Plymouth which wasn't as cheap as my trip to London the day before - I got two free rapid charges at Mini
Oxford , one on the way there, and another on the way back and used about 3/4 a tank of fuel (my choice to burn fuel as I needed to protect my charge
level as much charge as possible as I was leaving at 6:30 am the following morning. So, a grand total of £7.85 in fuel for that one - a total of 270
odd miles.
Plymouth was a slightly different story - Full tank and a rapid Charge in Exeter got me down to Plymouth and then another charge/top up of the tank in
Bristol, before EV'ing it all the way home...so somewhere around the £20 mark for the 330 odd mile trip and thoroughly enjoyed it!
Interior is a work of art - totally futuristic and feels like an event whenever you step in the car....:-)
Hi,
Yeah we're loving ours too, done something like 1300 miles so far (1241 in fact having checked the connected drive app with the car 6 miles
away!) 
My wife is the main driver of the i3 as I work from home full time now but I find any excuse I can to take it for a spin when she's home. It
just has a special feeling to drive that's hard to explain but I'm sure you know exactly what I mean.
Our longest trip was at the weekend when we went to visit my Dad on his birthday. It was from Kilmarnock to Whithorn and back in the same day.
That's about 82 miles each way and we did about another 12 miles around Whithorn. So around 175 miles for the day. Our i3 is BEV only so we had
an excuse to explore some of the charge points en route plus we plugged in at my Dad's house. We stopped at Newton Stewart on the way down and
used the CCS charger to do a quick 15 minute top up. We would have stopped a bit longer but we were expected for lunch so had to cut it short. Then on
the way back home we stopped in Girvan for another top-up on a CCS charger. These 50kW chargers are really the key to making electric cars practical
for medium distances as you can add significant charge/range in a relatively short period of time. Combining those with a 32A charger at home works
really well for us.
The drive to my Dad's and back was really good fun where on the way down I was trying to drive efficiently and then on the way back I was
driving pretty swiftly as I knew we had plenty of charge. It takes a bit of practice to get used to the regeneration when driving quickly
cross-country but I was getting pretty good at it by the end of the journey. In a normal car you'd might lift off the throttle and hover above
the brake as you approach a sequence of corners, waiting to see if you are clear to go "through" the corners or if a speed adjustment is
required in order to go around them in the event of traffic. If you do that in the i3 you tend to lose too much speed due to regen so a slightly
different approach is needed. This isn't flat out driving or anything, just the sort of driving you might do on roads you know very well where
you are trying to keep good, smooth momentum and "flow".
As you say, the interior is really nice but in a very unconventional, but refreshing way. I could say that about pretty much everything to do with the
car so far actually. Probably one of the coolest features is the preconditioning where you can set it for a departure time and it will warm the
interior up and defrost/demist the windows in the 15 mins leading up to departure. Nothing better than just walking out of the house without a jacket
on and jumping in and driving away while the neighbours are in hats and gloves scraping their windscreens!
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rm0rgan
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| posted on 16/10/17 at 03:24 PM |
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So, Thought I'd share some thoughts on my past 7 months of EV ownership.... having covered 13,500 miles I thought some of you would be
interested in how it's been...
Background is after being taken for a ride in my bosses Tesla S (the stupidly fast version), it showed me just how smooth, silent and quick an
electric car could be, so it was this that made me go looking at options and in the end, I got to a week-long test drive in the BMW i3 REX - Cotswold
BMW in Hereford pretty much surpassed every car buying experience I had before (and this included Audi, Jags, Range Rovers and Mercs) and by the time
I had reached the end of the road I knew the i3 was totally different to anything I had driven before...
Ok, so it does look a little 'challenging' from certain (many!) angles but inside it is streets ahead of the others in terms of design,
including the Tesla I had been in before (and this was also the opinion of my boss who owns it saying it oozed quality). The design won't be to
everyone's taste but to me, it's a work of art and on a completely different level to the normal drab interiors you see in cars these days
- the use of recycled materials makes it feel entirely different and the application of tech makes the whole experience more engaging.
It's quick too - surprisingly quick - from 0 to 40, it will pretty much surprise everything off the line but that's not really the point -
it's how with the instant burst of speed comes proper agility - it's RWD so has that trademark planted feel that you only really get in
RWD cars and given how skinny the wheels are I'm amazed it handles as well as it does.
So, what's it like to live with - well, I've covered just over 13,500 miles now, with about 1,000 or so of those using petrol via the
Range Extender - the tank only holds a gallon or so of unleaded and this gives you about an 80-90 miles extended range (remember, the petrol engine
does not drive the wheels in the i3, it acts as a generator) which means on average I'm currently returning somewhere around 1000 mpg!
I've added about £20 a month to my electric bill which is less than I expected (mainly as I tend to charge at work for free or while I am out
and about so rarely arrive home empty of charge and so just top up) - it takes about £2.50 of electric to charge it from flat and this gives me about
120 - 140 miles of EV range. My BMW Chargemaster card costs me £7.50 a month and this gives me access to around 5,000 charge points across the UK (but
I generally only stop at rapid chargers where it takes a max of half an hour to take me from flat to about 90% - the last 10% takes longer as it
incorporates some cell management).
Cost - it's not a cheap car but you have to factor in some different thinking and apply a bit of 'man maths'. After all the options
I added (Sports Pack, LED lights, Leather, Harmon Kardon Speakers, Pro Nav etc) the car came in at just over £40k but from that list price BMW gave me
£3.5k as a deposit contribution and the government another £4.5k - so now we were down to £32k and with a pretty good finance deal the car is costing
me around £500 a month based on 18,000 miles pa. As I'm no longer putting in £300 a month in fuel this makes it in real terms £200 a month, but
for me, the icing on the cake is I get 45ppm from my employer for business mileage regardless of what car I drive, so I end up with a net gain of
around £100 to £200 a month all told!
So, the Good Stuff:
The Performance - it's rapid and fun!
The Quality - it really does feel well put together in a polar bear saving kind of way!
The Refinement - it's incredibly quiet, almost spooky quiet.
The Tech - it makes everything else seem antiquated.
ReX - you'll be glad of having the onboard generator should you not have time to stop and charge or you can't get a charge due to knobs in
their plug-in hybrids trying to eek out 20 miles of range after an hour on the charger.
The Bad:
I felt car sick when I first got it - the lack of noise as a reference makes you feel a little weird at first and passengers also feel it at first.
Small boot - inside it's spacious but the boot is compromised.
It's only a 2 + 2, so no middle seat in the rear means a max of 4 people can come along for the ride.
The front seats lack a bit of lateral support - they are not uncomfortable by any stretch but could be better in the hugging department.
Suicide doors - look great but in practice, you need to think of this car like a 2 door with easier access to the rear.
Charging infrastructure - increasingly you find muppets hogging chargers to gain just 20 miles of EV range.
Go and get one for an extended test drive! 
Sigs are uncool.
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zilspeed
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| posted on 16/10/17 at 04:40 PM |
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As soon as I can move to a full electric or Rex, I will.
We've had a Toyota Auris hybrid for the last two years.
It's not as good as a diesel in pure MPG, but if you look at relative efficiency for a 1.8 petrol auto, it's excellent.
It's still not good enough though, and a full electric or Rex is next for me.
On a run out around the Trossachs yesterday - to catch the autumn scenery in our old Golf GTI, (£500 worth) I had the realisation that provided I keep
something like that about the place for rare longer journeys, we could easily use an electric car the rest of the time.
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craig1410
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| posted on 1/8/23 at 11:31 AM |
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Hi all,
I just stumbled on this thread and thought I'd put in a brief update.
We've still got our original i3 94Ah and it now has 74k miles on it after 6.5 years. We have no plans to change the car although we were tempted
to update it with a new 120Ah model just before BMW discontinued it. But the car itself hadn't been updated enough other than the battery
capacity to justify starting a fresh round of finance, and we actually preferred the colour of our existing car to those on offer for new cars. Then
there was the change in vehicle tax rules and reduced government contribution to EV car purchase.
The car has been very reliable and cheap to service with only one major repair needed and a few minor bits of maintenance. We purchased the 5 year
service plan for £325 when we bought it, although in practice this only really pays for a service at 2 years and another at 4 years. Still good value
though to get it through the warranty period with FDSH.
Since then, I have replaced the brake discs and pads all round once and I replaced the front suspension strut rubber gaiters and top swivel mounts
which were a known issue on early to mid i3s. The brakes were no different in cost or process to a petrol/diesel car, and the suspension work was
pretty straightforward as well, and not too expensive to do DIY.
The only major repair the car has needed has been a replacement AC compressor which was done a few months back. That was a fairly painful £2935 inc
VAT supplied and fitted by BMW but that it largely because it is a high voltage electric compressor rather than a more typical mechanically driven one
you see on most cars. The compressor alone was around £1500 and it also needed a couple of AC lines with integral filters replaced and of course a
de-gas, flush and re-gas with the expensive R1234YF gas. Labour time was 5 hours at £140/hr (ex VAT) and then of course you need to add VAT to
everything. I did look into doing the work myself but honestly it was just not worth it given that I would have needed at least two trips to an AC
shop to get the car de-gassed and re-gassed, and if you look at the complexity of the i3's AC system and the official process to replace the
compressor, it's no surprise it takes 5 hours even for BMW to do it. Also, if I did the work myself then I would most likely invalidate the 2
year parts warranty on the compressor because of the necessity to follow the correct steps during the flushing and re-oiling process.
Initially when I got the quotation, my wife said she would instead just wind the window down to stay cool but that wasn't an option because the
AC system not only cools the interior but also cools the batteries. Not only that but because we have the heat pump option, it also heats the interior
and batteries.
Cosmetically the car looks brand new, mainly because the exterior body panels are composite and don't retain parking dings. The interior has also
worn well and just needs a deep valet to get it back to looking like new.
Most importantly, my wife still loves the car as her daily driver and has no intention of replacing it any time soon. Our drivetrain and battery
warranty runs until January 2025 at which point we might consider updating to a later second hand i3, but alternatively we might just accept the risk
of something going wrong. The batteries themselves are still lasting just as long as they did when the car was new, a testament to the excellent
design and thermal management I'd say. I'm sure there has to be some degradation but we just don't notice it and still get ranges well
in excess of 100 miles even in winter and in excess of 120 miles in the summer. To be honest, the type of driving has more impact on range than the
season, with motorway driving being worst and urban driving being best as you'd expect. Energy lost to wind resistance and other rolling losses
is something you can't regenerate during deceleration.
So, after 6.5 years and 74k miles, I can categorically conclude that our i3 experiment has been a massive success. The only thing that disappoints us
is the lack of compelling alternatives during that time. There are a few now that I would consider, such as the Hyundai Ioniq 5 or 6 and of course the
likes of the Porsche Tacan or Audi e-tron but they are out of my reach for now. I just don't do enough miles to justify such a car.
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coyoteboy
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| posted on 7/8/23 at 11:22 AM |
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quote:
Originally posted by rf900rush
My question would be, how much would a new battery pack cost when the warranty runs out.
You may sell the car, say with 1 year warranty left, but who would buy it with a risk of needing to buy a new battery pack 1 year later.
I looked at the G-wiz briefly (don't laugh) for cheap motoring, but when the battery replace cost was included , the running cost was close to my
2.5l Subaru Outback.
I know Batteries have improved greatly, but they all die at some point.
May be a personal lease hire, and leave the battery problem to them?
Meh there's plenty of data on Teslas with 250K miles upward to a million on them, sure batteries die, so do engines. Would I buy a car with 1
year warranty left on teh battery - sure, no problem - I buy cars with no warranty on the engine and there are places that repair batteries the same
as you can repair engines - the idea that you have to shovel out the old battery and replace the whole thing is just incorrect thinking. There's
still 80%+ capacity left after the warranty is done.
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sdh2903
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| posted on 7/8/23 at 11:43 AM |
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Id struggle to say a 6 yo car that needed a 3k repair was a massive success tbh. Glad you're still happy with it though.
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coyoteboy
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| posted on 7/8/23 at 02:19 PM |
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quote:
Originally posted by sdh2903
Id struggle to say a 6 yo car that needed a 3k repair was a massive success tbh. Glad you're still happy with it though.
That's a valid point, I mean you could fit a new engine to most IC cars for that. For such a mission-critical component to last 6 years is a bit
poor.
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craig1410
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| posted on 8/8/23 at 02:23 PM |
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Don't get me wrong, I was not "happy" to have to spend that on the AC compressor but I don't think it's realistic to suggest
that you could get a new engine fitted to an IC car for that amount of money. For a start the AC compressor itself was £1500 which was for a genuine,
warrantied part from the dealer. I could have got a compressor for £800 from the aftermarket. The rest of the cost was a combination of labour and VAT
for an AC job that would not be easy to DIY.
I'd be interested to know what sort of brand new engine you could get for £1500 direct from a dealer, or for £800 from some other source, and
then have it fitted for another £1500. Sure, maybe you could get a 1.2 litre Ford Fiesta petrol engine from a scrapyard with 80k miles on the clock
but you ain't going to get anything brand new with a 2 year warranty for that. It's not really an apples to apples comparison anyway tbh.
That said, it's not even far fetched that a car might need a new engine within 6 years because I had a 2008 Toyota Aygo which got a new short
engine after just 45k miles and about 2.5 years due to piston slap and it was just as bad again after 90k miles when I sold it on. Fortunately the new
engine got fitted under warranty the first time.
Anyway, my point was that overall cost of ownership (servicing + maintenance) has been very low over those 6 years, even taking account of the AC
failure, and the cost savings due to the very low cost per mile has made up for that many times over.
On the topic of "what happens if the battery fails out of warranty" I tend to agree with @coyoteboy that there is lots of good evidence that
the batteries typically last well beyond the warranty cut off, and are modular in design so can be repaired if a sub-module was to fail. As I said,
even after 74k miles and 6 years, our i3 still has the same range, as far as we can tell, as it had when new. Logically it must have diminished to
some extent but we honestly can't tell.
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