Gadgetory

mmm is Chris from the verge and we are in the driver's seat of a BMW i3 today this is the company's first mass-produced practical all electric sedan part of BMWs new I range of vehicles the other being d i8 which is a hybrid supercar so you have the full spectrum on one end d FD exotic supercar on this end you have the practical family college let's see what this thing can do so the i3 doesn't really have the pickup of $100,000 Tesla Model S but then again this car starts around $40,000 so all things considered it's pretty quick as a lot of EVs are the interior is really unique if you've ever been in a BMW don't expect this to feel familiar they have this really cool natural looking bamboo in the dash and then you have these these sort of exposed fiber accents that kind of indicate that the car is like very ecologically friendly and if you open the the the door the frame of the car itself is all carbon fiber BMWs been working for a long time and sort of figuring out how to mass-produce carbon fiber which is typically a really expensive material they've done it and this car is all carbon fiber which reduces the weight of it quite a bit is that extensive range the car is equipped with I Drive as most BMWs are these days and it works pretty well here you have the knob in this in the in the center console with a touchpad on top of it that you can use to spell letters the car has a few different modes depending on how much rains you want to try to squeeze out of it there's a comfort mode in Eco Pro Mode and Eco Pro Plus in order of lease efficient the most efficient the car is available in two different versions there's an all-electric which is what we're driving and then there's also an electric with a range extender engine in it and it's just a little tiny 2 cylinder engine and it's only job is to keep the battery charged enough to allow the electric motors to run any time that you need to go you can just put des in the tank we have about a hundred miles even if you have nothing in the battery whereas with the all-electric version is just like any other easy you've got to charge it up with this particular charger you can get up to 80% in about 45 minutes to an hour which is not bad all things considered remember back to our Tesla shoot from last year where we almost got stuck out on the road we plugged in to a standard charger EB charger that we found in murrow Bay California and it took all night to get to about the same level shark so really not that at all this car is not on sale yet it's going on presale this week this is actually the launch the grand launch here at CES I'll be available in spring