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Even though the Super Bowl is still about a week away, today BMW released the 60 second i3 commercial which will air during the big game. The commercial begins with a flashback to a live filming of NBC's Today Show in 1994 with Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel Talking about the internet. They have absolutely no idea what it is or how one might use it. They even can't agree on what the "@" symbol on a keyboard means. It's really hard to imagine this, since in the 21 years that have passed since this was filmed, the internet has integrated its way into all of our lives so much it is difficult to image life without it. That's the whole point of the commercial. Things that seem foreign to us today may be the norm very soon in today's rapidly evolving world of technology. After the flashback, Katie and Bryant are sitting in an i3, and their conversation sounds very much like the one they had 21 years ago, struggling to understand what the i3 is and even how it wa...

Today at the DC Auto Show, BMW announced they have partnered with Volkswagen and ChargePoint to begin what will be the largest roll out of CCS Fast Charge stations in the US. This first phase will consist of the installation of roughly 100 CCS Fast Charge stations, split between the East and West Coasts.  On the East coast, there will be locations approximately every 50 miles between Washington DC and Boston, and on the West coast the new "CCS Highway" will span from San Diego, CA all the way to Portland OR. All of these locations will feature 50kW dual-head Fast Charge stations, including CHAdeMO charging capabilities as well as CCS. In addition, these locations will have multiple Level 2 ChargePoint EVSE's, allowing the user to "top off" once the vehicle reaches 80% state of charge from the DC fast charger.  In addition to the "CCS Highway" locations, BMW is also going to install a network of their 24kW DC Fast Chargers at secondary locations which a...

  Me & my MINI-E in 2009, my ActiveE in 2012 and my i3 in 2014. Five and a half years and over 157,000 electric miles (252,000 km), mostly powered by solar-generated electricity. It's been a little over five years since my electric journey began. I couldn't have possibly imagined where this was going back in 2009 when I was accepted in to the MINI-E trial lease program. I knew I was interested in alternative fuel vehicles, and I knew I wanted to reduce my personal consumption of oil, but I really had no idea if I'd like driving electric or if the industry would actually be making and selling electric cars anytime soon. Sure there were rumors that GM was going to make a plug in car that they were calling the Volt, there was a small start-up car company in California called Tesla selling an electric Lotus conversion for $105,000 and there were also a few new companies like Aptera and Phoenix Motorcars trying to bring electric cars to market, but nothing really seemed cer...

We stopped at the Big Moose Deli in New York for some coffee. It's about ten miles from the Vermont border.  Perhaps the most discussed topic of the BMW i3 is the implementation of the range extender for the North American market. In an effort to have the vehicle qualify for the California Air Resource Board BMW set restrictions on how and when the range extender can turn on, effectively reducing the utility of the REx. These restrictions are most apparent when attempting to use the car for long journeys which include drastic increases in elevation. This topic has been covered here and on every other EV site extensively, and recently it was announced that BMW is working on a software update that will allow, under certain conditions,  the range extender to come on much earlier than the 6.5% threshold it currently uses. I am actually beta testing that software for BMW now, having had it installed on my i3 just last week. The new software also includes some other updates that wil...

As the temperatures drop, so will your range. That's life with an electric car, but there are ways to minimize the effects of the cold. I remember back to my first year in the MINI-E program. It was 2009 and there weren't many electric vehicles on the roads, especially outside of Southern California. About five months into the MINI-E Trial Lease program there was a rush of participants bringing their cars to their MINI dealer for service, telling them something was wrong with their cars. This occurred in late October... Suddenly, the cars couldn't go as far as we were used to, and the range drop off seemed to happen very quickly, without notice and without reason, leaving many people to assume their car was malfunctioning, and perhaps had a bad battery. Some of the people even swore the range drop coincided with their last service visit, so there had to be something done at the dealership that caused the loss of range. I had read quite a bit about electric cars before getti...

Jacob Harb (left) pictured with Oliver Walter of BMW at the LA Auto Show in 2012 I've just learned that Jacob Harb is no longer the Manager of Electric Vehicles for BMW of North America. Harb has held the position for a little over two years since the position was vacated by Richard Steinberg, who left the post in August of 2012 to assume the position of CEO of BMW's new car sharing program DriveNow. This is a bit surprising since I just talked with Jacob at the LA Auto Show a couple weeks ago where we discussed upcoming plans for BMW i. BMW hasn't announced who Harb's successor will be yet, but being close to BMW's e-mobility program I'd like to throw a couple names out there that they'll likely consider: 1) Jose Guerrero . Jose is the i3 Product Manager for North America. He knows as much about the i3 & i8 and anybody at BMW and is good in front of a camera, which is important for department heads who need to be available for interviews.  2) Joan Bowen...

This picture, captured from BMW's website shows an i3 owner using the Flexible Mobility program and borrowing a gasoline BMW, presumably for a long distance family trip. Nearly two years ago, BMW announced they would be offering gasoline loaner cars to i3 customers for the occasional long trip they may need to take. These long trips of perhaps hundreds of miles would be difficult or impossible to negotiate with their limited range i3, which has an EPA range rating of 81 miles per charge. While this sounded like a great idea, many people wondered how it would be implemented in the US. There are strict laws here in the US that prohibit manufacturers from demanding the independently owned dealerships from offering services that they don't want to. Of course, if BMW of North America wanted to subsidize the whole program, then most all dealers would probably join in and offer the loaner vehicles; but that being highly unlikely since it would be very expensive. It was assumed that BM...