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2016 i3 color options. Wheel choices remain the same. BMW has added three new color options for the i3 in 2016. At the same time though, they have deleted three colors, so the i3 is still available in six different colors. The pessimist may say, "It's still only available in Solar Orange, and fifty shades of grey," and while they wouldn't be entirely incorrect in saying so, I think the changes are an improvement over what was previously offered. Fluid Black really looks great.  The best addition in my opinion is the new Fluid Black. I had the opportunity to see a Fluid Black i3 in person earlier in the year and I was instantly sold. I believe this is going to be the top selling i3 color in 2016, and I would have ordered my car with it if it were available in 2014. So the i3 color options in 2016 will be as follows: The original Capparis White, Ionic Silver and Solar Orange remain available. Arravani Grey, Laurel Grey and Andesite Silver have been dropped and Fluid Bla...

Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn resigned on Wednesday. While this blog's primary focus is the BMW i3, I occasionally sprinkle in some featured EV products and discuss topics not necessarily i3-centric, but are instead just general electric vehicle information. In light of the recent revelations that Volkswagen has been deliberately cheating on emissions testing for many years now, I wrote the following article for Green Car Reports . So far, no other automaker has been caught as VW has - with proof that they purposely installed a "defeat device" on the vehicles so the cars would curb their emissions only during actual emission testing. However it's fair game to speculate if other OEMs may also be exposed as cheaters now that the EPA knows what they have to look for, and how to expose it. It will certainly be interesting to watch this all unfold. In any event, Volkswagen is going to face huge fines for intentionally violating Federal emission standards and I wanted to...

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...

An i3 sits next to a 24kW DC Fast Charge unit during the announcement of the BMW, VW & ChargePoint joint venture earlier this year.  It's been seven months since BMW, along with Volkswagen and ChargePoint announced a joint venture which would install roughly 100 DC fast charge units on the East and West coasts. While there's been a lot of work identifying potential locations and negotiating with site managers, there hasn't really been any tangible progress that electric vehicle owners could see.   The plan is to create "Express Charging Corridors" on both coasts, with DC Fast Charge stations placed no more than 50 miles apart. The East Coast Corridor will connect Washington DC to Boston, Massachusetts and the West Coast Corridor would extend from San Diego, California to Portland, Oregon.  There would be two kinds of DC Fast Charge stations utilized. The stations placed directly on the highway locations of the corridors would be 50kW units, most of which will...

Turn the volume up to hear the A/C compressor at work Now that dog days of summer are upon us, I've noticed quite a few i3 owners popping up on social media sites like the i3 Facebook Group , the MyBMWi3 Forum  and the BMW i Circuit Forum  asking if the loud noise they hear coming from under their car is normal. Like all EVs, the i3 is very quiet most of the time so when you hear a loud noise coming from the vehicle which you've never heard before, it's understandable to assume there may be something wrong. However in this case there is nothing to worry about. The loud noise you hear when you park the car or when you plug in to charge is just the air conditioning compressor running. The car's thermal management system is working to cool off the batteries. Keeping the batteries cool is vital to prolonging their life, and preventing early capacity loss. Some early Nissan LEAF owners who lived in warm weather climates experienced unacceptable battery capacity loss and actu...

Delivery day: May 21st, 2014 Well that went by fast. After waiting patiently for years for BMW to bring the "Megacity" car, their first production electric vehicle to market, my first year of ownership really flew by quickly. On May 21st of last year I was the first i3 REx delivery in the US. My one year review is about a month late, but that has only given me some more time to gather my thoughts about it. About a month into ownership last year, I authored two posts dedicated to my initial likes and dislikes . Many of those initial thoughts still hold true, but I've also had some changes of opinion as well as discovering new annoyances and new attributes which I appreciate. One of the few pictures I have of my car in its real color; Laurel Grey. I wrapped it red the first week I had it. Overall I'm very happy with my i3 and there isn't another car I'd prefer to have. It really suits my needs while offering the perfect balance of performance, utility, comfort ...