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Returning to your car to find the windows wide open isn't pleasant - but it's much worse if it had been raining. Photo credit: Chuck Vossler  Long gone are the days of a simple key to open your car's door and turn on the ignition. Keys today aren't even really keys in the traditional sense. With many cars, you only need to have the key on you and as you grab the handle of the vehicle the door will unlock. Then, you get into the vehicle and instead of inserting the key into an ignition, you simply push a button and the car will turn on. This is, in fact how the BMW i3 works, as long as you ordered the car with the optional Comfort Access feature. BMW i3 key fob Regardless of the other i3 features that you select, all i3 key fobs are the same. With a push of a button, they can lock or unlock the doors, or unlock the rear hatch (for MY 2015 on, the 2014 model key fob unlocked the front trunk).  Like most other key fobs, there is a panic button that sounds the car's ala...

Horatiu Boeriu of BMWBLOG recently did a piece titled "BMW vs. Tesla - Which Company Is A Bigger Innovator?" in which he mentions that while both companies are competing in the premium automobile segment and are committed to electric mobility, they are taking different paths to achieve success. I'm not going to try to analyze who has it right or who is a bigger innovator, but it's clear that both companies have chosen to focus on different aspects of their respective vehicles. With Tesla, it's all about the batteries. Unlike every other automobile manufacturer, BMW included, Tesla's approach isn't for their electric cars to complement their lineup of gasoline and diesel offerings since they don't have any. Instead, it is to render gasoline vehicles from their competitors obsolete. In order to do so, their cars have to be at least as good or better than most features of competing gas cars; and that includes range, performance and utility. BMW on the ot...

If you already drive an i3, you've probably seen this warning pop up on the dash. The rear coach doors have been one of the more talked about features of the i3. Most people seem to favor conventionally opening rear doors, especially when they are considering hauling the kiddies around in the back as it can be difficult to open the doors in tight parking spaces. Surprisingly, the feedback I've gotten from many early i3 owners has been generally positive in regards to coach doors, (or at least there haven't been any complaints!) so perhaps in practice they aren't as cumbersome as many predicted they might be. However there does seem to be a problem that has popped up with regards to them. As soon as the first i3's hit the roads I heard from a few of the first owners that the rear door ajar warning light would come on often during cornering. I didn't report on it since it was only a couple people and there are always minor build issues with new models. I figured B...

Virtually every facet of the i3's manufacturing process is different and BMW is evidently struggling to manage setbacks According to Jay Cole over at insideevs.com i3 production is currently 50% lower than expected at this point in time. Cole's source is Manager Magazine Online , a German Publication, which states the high rejection rate of the carbon fiber parts made for the car. The article goes on to say that BMW's recent announcement that the company will be investing another 100 million euros to increase the production of carbon fiber is tied to this issue. Manager also says BMW is only churning out 70 i3's per day which is about half of what they were hoping to be making by now. BMW began i3 production in October so they are four months in and now have over 11,000 i3's on backorder. Plus, US sales are only just beginning so it would appear that even if BMW gets the current problems solved in short order (and that's a big "if"), it will still pr...