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Showing posts from August, 2015

First DCQC Unit in the East Coast Express Charging Corridor Installed

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An i3 sits next to a 24kW DC Fast Charge unit during the announcement of the BMW, VW & ChargePoint joint venture earlier this year.  It's been seven months since BMW, along with Volkswagen and ChargePoint announced a joint venture which would install roughly 100 DC fast charge units on the East and West coasts. While there's been a lot of work identifying potential locations and negotiating with site managers, there hasn't really been any tangible progress that electric vehicle owners could see.   The plan is to create "Express Charging Corridors" on both coasts, with DC Fast Charge stations placed no more than 50 miles apart. The East Coast Corridor will connect Washington DC to Boston, Massachusetts and the West Coast Corridor would extend from San Diego, California to Portland, Oregon.  There would be two kinds of DC Fast Charge stations utilized. The stations placed directly on the highway locations of the corridors would be 50kW units, most of which will

BMW i3 A/C Compressor Noise: Yes, That's Normal...

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Turn the volume up to hear the A/C compressor at work Now that dog days of summer are upon us, I've noticed quite a few i3 owners popping up on social media sites like the i3 Facebook Group , the MyBMWi3 Forum  and the BMW i Circuit Forum  asking if the loud noise they hear coming from under their car is normal. Like all EVs, the i3 is very quiet most of the time so when you hear a loud noise coming from the vehicle which you've never heard before, it's understandable to assume there may be something wrong. However in this case there is nothing to worry about. The loud noise you hear when you park the car or when you plug in to charge is just the air conditioning compressor running. The car's thermal management system is working to cool off the batteries. Keeping the batteries cool is vital to prolonging their life, and preventing early capacity loss. Some early Nissan LEAF owners who lived in warm weather climates experienced unacceptable battery capacity loss and actu