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My i3 charging from the HSC-40p. You can see my older ClipperCreek CS-40 all the way on the left. When it comes to electric vehicle charging equipment, there’s certainly no shortage of choices. Even though it’s a relatively new market, there are dozens of manufacturers selling products that allow owners to safely and conveniently charge their electric cars. Although this equipment is commonly referred to as a "charger" or "wallbox", the proper term is actually EVSE, which stands for Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment.  These devices don't actually charge the car; they provide the electricity to do so. That's because the actual charging equipment is built into the car. The EVSE's purpose is to safely deliver the correct amount of electricity to the onboard charging equipment.  Now that electric cars are beginning to gain momentum in the marketplace, there are a lot of companies jockeying to get a market share of the EVSE business. The vast majority of thes...

BMW has long said that BMW i wasn't created exclusively for developing and manufacturing their plug in electric vehicles; that it would also be devoted to developing sustainable mobility solutions as well. Car sharing is one of those mobility solutions that are getting a lot of attention lately, and not just from independent companies like Uber and Lyft. OEMs are also getting into the car sharing game, and GM’s Maven car sharing service is now in 13 US cities. BMW’s car sharing arm was initially called DriveNow, but was recently brought entirely in house (DriveNow was a partnership between BMW i and Sixt) and rebranded as ReachNow. The three i3's and two 3-Series sedans used for the car sharing program were parked in front of The Solaire for the announcement on Thursday, December 8th.  ReachNow was launched earlier this year in Seattle, Washington. They then added service to Portland, Oregon and recently became available in Brooklyn, NY. However yesterday, BMW i and the Albanes...

Details of the November software update ( 15-11-502 ) for the i3 and i8. Click to enlarge or download. BMW has just rolled out another software update (15-11-502) for the i3 in the North American market. Since the i3 launch, these updates have been coming out about once every six months, and as with previous i3 software updates, they are free of charge. Hopefully this time around BMW dealers know these updates are indeed free. Last year when BMW introduced an i3 software update, for some reason there were some dealers that charged their customers for the service. Once BMW realized what was happening, they reached out to their dealer network to inform them that these i3 updates are indeed free, and they were instructed to refund the money to anyone who was charged for it. If you were one of the people who unfortunately paid for an i3 software and wasn't reimbursed, please contact your dealer and they will refund what you paid. This new update is a combination of fixing some nagging...

Fill 'Er up! I know many readers here have spent countless sleepless nights pondering the the age-old question: How long does it take to refuel a BMW i3's tiny gas tank? Well maybe not, but I have had people argue that driving the i3 REx on an extended trip would be very inconvenient because they would have to stop to fill up the gas tank every 50-60 miles. I've done quite a few road trips with my i3 REx, and stopping once an hour for a couple of minutes to refill the tank never really bothered me much. I wrote a post last year which detailed a 462 mile round trip I made to Vermont from my home in New Jersey and refueling was one of the topics that many people commented on. On that trip, I had to stop for gas a total of seven times, as I only recharged the car once, which was at my destination. I drove 111 miles on battery, 351 miles on the range extender and used a total of 9.87 gallons of gas, averaging 35.5 mpg. It was snowing in Vermont when we arrived In that post, I w...

The ChargePoint Home 25 EVSE is the latest addition to my EVSE collection When most electric vehicle owners think of ChargePoint, they likely are thinking about public charging infrastructure. That's because for the past five years, ChargePoint's focus has been on installing and maintaining the largest network of public EVSEs in the US, with well over 20,000 locations currently in use. Back in 2012, ChargePoint did release an EVSE for home charging, the CT500 made by Coulomb Technologies, but it was priced a bit above the market at $2,495. At the time, it was the only home EVSE that was networked, so that was a major advantage. However, the price was prohibitively high and competitive units were selling for half of that, so the CT500 never sold in any serious volume. That won't be the case with ChargePoint Home, ChargePoint's new entry in the home EVSE market. I've had the opportunity to test this product for a month now, before the official launch and I've been...