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After a recent 62 mile round trip I finished with a 5.0 mi/kWh consumption rating. I've never achieved such a low consumption rate on any other EV that I have driven. This translates to an astounding 200 Wh's per mile! When the EPA range and efficiency figures were announced couple months ago, the i3 became the most efficient vehicle available in America. Here in the US, the EPA uses "MPGe" as its official efficiency metric to compare the energy consumption of alternative fuel vehicles. That stands for "miles per gallon equivalent", and unfortunately most people don't really understand what it means or how that really translates to what the vehicle will cost them to operate. The consumption rate, or how many miles the car will travel on one kilowatt of electricity, (mi/kWh) is a metric that I, and many other electric vehicle owners prefer to use. i3 BEV EPA ratings Wikipedia describes the MPGe rating as follows: "The ratings are based on EPA's f...

BMW has been hosting i3 training events to get their client advisers up to speed and ready to sell the car. I'm very happy to hear they are doing this because I was really beginning to get concerned that they wouldn't properly prepare their sales staff for this unique vehicle. I even dedicated a post a few months ago to this very topic. I've now talked to a few client advisers that have done the training and they reported that they did indeed get a lot of useful information which will help them service their clients. The i3's tiny fuel tank is seen here at right in front of the battery pack in the center of the car.  This is where the heat pump is located and why you cannot get the heat pump if you have an i3 REx This week the latest round of training sessions are being held up at BMW headquarters in Woodcliff Lake, NJ and details of what is being taught are starting to leak out from some of the client advisers that are there. A couple things of interest shared were de...

Back in February we featured  Steven from The Netherlands as a Born  Electric  guest blogger . At the time he mentioned to me that he was planning a road trip with his i3 REx that would take him on a fantastic journey from The Netherlands through Germany and France to the final destination of Switzerland. The funny thing is, I almost was able to meet him along the trip because I was actually in  Switzerland  the week before he arrived and my wife and I even spent an afternoon at the same lake in Zurich you see pictured below! In any event, once I heard Steven was  about  to engage upon this 1,100 mile road trip I asked him if he  wouldn't mind sharing the details here once he returns and he was kind enough to do so. I get a lot of questions about the range extender, and many people want to know if it is possible to take it on a long trip. This post doesn't answer every question, but it does give some insight into how the car will perform on sure a...