Gadgetory

welcome to a new BMW this is the first of the AI cars the i3 what they call a megacity vehicle a clean sheet all-electric that if it weren't for the badge on the nose you probably wouldn't know as a BMW at all this will either go down as a seminal visionary change in the company's direction or just a little bit too much for the brand to bear history will write that story but in the meantime we're here to see what it's all about today all right now nobody accuses the i3 of being the prettiest BMW especially from the back it's kind of sporty from the front and I'll let you decide what you think about the side but the structure is interesting this car is TARDIS like it's bigger inside than on the outside check it out you've got a very spacious conventional front door but then you've got what they call nowadays a coach door because no one likes to term suicide doors anymore notice when you look in there you've got a flat floor that's because there's no need for a driveshaft or exhaust pipes to run up and down the car they own those videos I've done showing you the new thing in seat design well here it is look at this guy this is a thin shell seat design it's not this big old block that's like five or six inches thick of padding and leather and frame it's really a couple inches of thickness plus some curvature it's part of a way that you make more room in a small car and say it with me save weight when you get the weight down everything sorts itself out the car handles better accelerates better does that with a less heavy smaller battery in many cases it's just win-win-win now this guy as you can see all around me is made up of what looks like carbon fiber but not quite this is carbon fibre reinforced plastic it's kind of a middle ground that gives you more of a real world price base carbon fiber is very expensive and very slow to work with but this is a hybrid of that and a much more pliable usable plastic that is a middle ground it's going to make this car more real-world priced and faster to manufacture while still getting really light and really tough okay now motive power is an interesting story here Tale of Two Cities if you will we're seeing right here the inverter and the electric motor that all i3s will have 170 horsepower 184 foot-pounds of torque twenty-seven hundred pound curb weight small numbers on all counts but the torque to weight ratio is 22 percent better than a320 I and just 10 percent shy of a 328i with this configuration you've got eighty to a hundred miles of typical range on a full charge maybe up to a hundred and eighteen if you really drive it eco in a steady state but look at this hole over here that's there for a reason you can option this car as a range extender they would put a 650 CC basically BMW motorcycle engine here running a generator to add another let's say 70 miles or so of electric range to the battery now that may sound like a Chevy Volt killer but not exactly a Chevy Volt can use its range extender generator to run continuously as long as you have gas it's running on electric this one is more of an additional big boost of range but it does not keep you running continuously now the battery in this car is actually kind of uninteresting and that is interesting if you look at that thing you see it's a very simple rectangular flat square package that's because they started this car with a clean sheet design all around it they didn't need to mold a battery to fit an existing car platform that has a place for a drive shaft and things like that that makes this very simple potentially modular in the future don't know if that's on their plans or not and it's also lithium-ion technology not lithium polymer which you typically use to make batteries of irregular shapes you get that eighty to a hundred ish miles on your i3 with a three hour charge from nearly flat that's pretty short by industry standards these days now beyond charging what I find interesting is BMW is got this kind of AI fiala G about the whole ecosystem of getting around here's one called Park now this programs going to allow you to use their resources to find a place to park like for your daily work parking and also have your charging waiting for you there as well drive now already doing this in San Francisco by our office where BMW lectric cars are in a car share program and then there's this alternative mobility program where when you need to go on a long drive they will loan you out a gas engine BMW that has no range issues and what they'd also like to see is all of these programs combining in a way that also interfaces with mass transit and even bicycle usage that's really a European thing American just don't do that okay first thing I notice when I get into the i3 is how spacious this guy is I'm a tall guy got no problem with Headroom it doesn't feel terribly narrow legroom is great you get this guy going by rocking this unusual drive control here kick forward for Drive and then back for neutral and reverse press the top for park so I kick that there now we're in drive mode off we go plenty of torque of course I've got ways to adjust the motor the powertrain down here with comfort Eco Pro and Eco Pro Plus you notice it doesn't go up to sport it goes down into different levels of eco BMW argues that this car doesn't need a sport mode because it's so light and because electric is so torquey it's sporty by its nature why is that instrument panel just a slit you see that little module sticking up there that is your instrument panel there are no gauges in this car understandably but it's all bezel it just bothers me for some reason when the other big LCD the iDrive panel to the right is gorgeous it floats in midair it's what about a 10 10 and 1/2 inch ultra wide screen beyond that it's standard I drive stuff which is good we do have here something new we have the touchpad controller for I drive I believe they call this I Drive 4.2 it'll let me do navigation by scrolling on the top of the thing or writing characters let's face it out he had that a little while ago but BMWs got it on a new bigger controller now it's perhaps the quietest electric car I've driven yet they all tend to be pretty quiet but some of them have a certain amount of electric gear whine you know the the reduction gear this one seems to have I sewed that out the best so far optional self driving tech on the i3 will handle steering braking and acceleration at up to 25 miles an hour braking but not staring at up to about 40 and adaptive cruise control on the freeway and the self parking tech in this car will move the ball forward as well handling not just steering but also the accelerator and the brake so torquey quiet pointable not radically different from a leaf or a focus cv which i also like but i'm starting to think that with electric vehicles we're just dealing with a kind of car that has less distinctive personality in its driving manners but here's the real shocker the only one I've discovered in this vehicle is they have delete it coasts as soon as you get off the accelerator this car goes into heavy region it's as if I'm crammed on the brakes but I'm never touching them now the i3 arrives q2 of 2014 pricing will be about 42 grand before credits and rebates and then about another 4 grand if you want to get the range extender option to add that roughly 70 miles on top of the hundred or so it does in its all-electric configuration what's interesting about this car is I would have written it off at arm's length as a compliance car a play made just to meet federal cafe and California zero emission standards so they can keep selling their other cars but there's too much ambition going on in this guy to just pawn it off that way this is a big deal for this company whether it's a successful big deal remains to be seen