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Yesterday at EVS29 in Montreal, BMW announced an energy storage system which uses BMW i3 battery packs. The system can utilize a used i3 pack, or it will be able to be purchased with a brand new battery pack. Perhaps the best aspect of the program is the fact that if you own an i3, you can have your old battery pack built into the system when you upgrade your car with a new pack. I've been waiting for this announcement for a while now. I can remember talking with one of BMW's top program managers from Munich three years ago. We were discussing my home solar system, and how I'd been powering my MINI-E and ActiveE electric cars with clean, renewable energy from the system for many years at that point. He then asked me the question, "What do you think will happen to your EV's battery once it has reached its end of life?" I answered that I would imagine it would probably be taken apart and recycled, with the lithium being used for new batteries. To which he said, ...

Fluid Black as pictured and Protonic Blue Metallic will most likely be very popular colors in 2017 While many of the changes that the 2017 BMW i3 will be getting have already been announced; such as the availability of the anticipated 94 Ah battery cells, the new Protonic Blue color and a moonroof option, I've now learned there are also more subtle changes in the US for the new model year. First, and most interesting, is the revelation that BMW will indeed continue to offer the i3 with the current 60 Ah battery, offering a lower range and lower cost i3 alternative. This is something that I don't believe has been reported on any other EV news site to date. I speculated that BMW would do this back in March, when I wrote this post dedicated to the topic. BMW hasn't made any statements regarding offering two battery options, and made no mention of it in the the official press release   of the 2017 i3. Still, my sources tell me otherwise. The 60 Ah i3 will only be offered as a ...

The "Hold state of charge" feature shown here on this i3 display is at the center of the recently filed lawsuit alleging the BMW i3 REx is unsafe to drive. Recently news has spread of a class action lawsuit filed in the state of California by MLG Automotive Law alleging that the BMW i3 REx is dangerous and "can result in a catastrophic situation for all those on the road." This, in my opinion, is grossly misleading. However in fairness, to say the vehicle can be driven like any other car while the range extender is in use is also grossly misleading. To understand the juxtaposition of those two statements takes some explanation. The truth is, the plaintiffs aren't making this up. What they are describing in the lawsuit is called "Reduced Power Mode" and it can happen under certain strenuous circumstances when the vehicle continues, for a prolonged period, to consume more power than the range extender can provide. In this post I'm going to attemp...