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The aggressive tread and the specialized rubber compound of Bridgestone Blizzaks should help me get through all the bad weather this winter brings I live in Northern New Jersey and we can get some pretty bad weather in the winter. The temperatures in January and February are routinely in the 20s (Fahrenheit) and can even dip down below zero from time to time. At those temperatures, you really should have dedicated winter tires for proper traction, even if the roads aren't always snow covered. In fact, most tire experts recommend that you buy dedicated winter tires instead using all-season tires if the average temperatures where you live are below 45 degrees in the winter. The Rial X10-I that fit the i3 come in the bright silver pictured here, and also painted black. That's not a plot to get you to spend more money on tires that you really don't need as I've seen some people contend. Winter tires are specifically made for use in cold weather and will definitely outperfor...

I have always maintained that a good number of i3 buyers will be Chevy Volt and Nissan LEAF owners that have just finished up the three year lease on their vehicle. Phil Tipper is an EV "early adopter" and leased a Nissan LEAF. His lease will expire next spring so he's trying to decide which plug in vehicle he'll get next. The i3 is on his list of possibilities and when BMW recently offered the i3 extended test drive Phil  jumped on the opportunity to get to know the car a little more. I love this extended test drive offering from BMW. I think it's a great way to give prospective customers a chance to absorb what the i3 is all about. Phil is already an experienced electric car driver so he could focus more on the specific features of the i3, but many others who have never experienced electric drive will find the extended time they have with an i3 intoxicating. Having more than a few minutes during a quick test drive at a dealership will absolutely help convince p...

Now that BMW has begun to deliver some BEV i3s to the ActiveE Electronauts, some of those in the ActiveE trial lease program who haven't yet gotten their i3 have been asking how the i3 compares to the ActiveE. Questions on ride quality, acceleration, handling and charge rate have been asked, but the biggest concern is: How does the range compare? After all, with electric vehicles, range is paramount. So I got together with Michael and Pamela Thwaite who just last week picked up their Ionic Silver i3 and we mapped out an 80 mile loop that would include roughly 50% highway and 50% secondary and tertiary roads. While everybody has different driving needs and patterns, it was our hope that this course would provide an evenly balanced mix of different driving conditions. That being said, this wasn't a carefully controlled scientific experiment. We didn't weigh ourselves to make sure both vehicles were carrying the same weight, we didn't calibrate our speedometers or record t...

You get a better view of just how tall and thin the tires on the i3 are without the body in place Note: This was originally posted on February 17th, 2014. I have had so many people message me about tire and wheel size information that I thought it would be a good idea to repost it. One of the more talked about features of the i3 is its tires. Not for decades has there been a car with such tall and narrow wheels and tires. Since the 70's, the trend has been for tires to get wider and wider, and that is especially true for performance cars since more rubber on the ground generally means better roadholding. Performance is critical for any BMW Then came along the i3. It's BMW's quirky-looking mega-city car, and the first electric car from the brand. With all the incredibly unique aspects of this vehicle, it's still the tires that catch most peoples attention when they first see it in person. They just aren't used to seeing such tall and thin tires on a car, let alone a...

A full range of official press photos of this semi-camouflaged Mi3 will be released a couple days before NAIAS in two weeks. This is the only one I was authorized to reveal. A bout six months ago, Eric Loveday of InsideEVs.com wrote this article that predicted the BMW M performance division won't be making an M version of the upcoming BMW i3 or i8. I've known for a while now that that was not true, but the information I got from BMW was under embargo until now so I couldn't comment on it previously. I finally got a chance to look at a pre-production ///M i3 last week. The car I saw didn't have all the body work or the special wheels that the ///M i3 pictured above has since this one is being used for internal testing here at BMW's North American headquarters, but it did have all the performance upgrades and ///M badging. I was lucky to be one of only a few people to get a sneak peak of the M i3 before its unveiling at NYIAS in two weeks. P erhaps this was the inten...