The biggest question regarding the BMW i3 that has been on everyone’s mind, especially since Tesla’s Model S offers a considerably bigger range for its EVs, was why BMW didn’t offer the car with a larger battery. The car itself may be considered an ugly duckling by some but that was not the main reason why it didn’t sell in record-breaking numbers, most people were interested in decent electric range.
The idea behind the BMW i3 was to create a city car and therefore it didn’t need a lot of range from the get go. However, people still freak out whenever they get inside a car and see an estimated range of just about 100 miles and that has a lot to do with the way we’ve been getting used to exploiting our cars, knowing that we can get 200 miles more out of it by simply stopping by a petrol station for a couple of minutes. While BMW officials might’ve been asked about the size of the i3 battery a number of times before, a clear answer was still not offered.
During the Frankfurt Motor Show though, talking to CAR magazine, we finally got a rather clear answer and it may be surprising to a couple of people. It turns out BMW decided to go with the battery the i3 was originally fitted with due to the CO2 footprint the car would’ve had otherwise. “The basic idea, at least from the BMW Group perspective, is to lower our CO2 footprint – that’s the real reason we do it. When we introduced the i3 with the smaller battery, it beat every single gasoline car by up to 50% in terms of CO2 footprint,” said Dick Arnold, head of product management at BMW i.
“Offering a huge battery with the tech available when we introduced the i3, there was no freaking way that you could have improved your footprint – you could even increase it. The new battery means it’s actually possible now to decrease and improve your CO2 footprint with bigger batteries, as seen in the Vision car,” he added. Therefore, while back in 2013 a bigger range wasn’t possible without affecting the overall CO2 footprint, that did change over the following years and the future i models will surely show it.
And among those future models we’ll also get to see the iNext in production clothes. The car will be electric and will feature the latest technology in autonomous driving, hopefully including Level 5 autonomous driving which means you won’t have to touch any of the controls once inside it. Sure, there’s still a long way to go but once this happens, all future BMW cars will change, hopefully for the better.
This is exactly why i chose the i3! Seriously.
People don’t realize it or are blind to understand thanks to Tesla marketing and Melon’s “twitting” that EVs are still very dirty due to battery pack manufacturing.
LG Chem released their study doing a 1-to-1 comparison of the Focus EV and Focus ICE. They found its up to 40% dirtier to manufacture EVs than the equivalent gasoline car. Only over the lifetime of the vehicle does it become up to 30% greener. The bothersome part is that they didnt provide an actual number for lifetime, which means lifetime is long… very long time. The average vehicle ownership is 11 years. That bounds the shortest period, but vehicle lifetime goes well beyond one owner.
It was in LG Chems interest to have positive results. I’ve got the full paper. It’s got the classic positive spin on bad results that researchers like to do.
So now extrapolate their results to a current gen EVs with large battery packs… Very very very dirty. Also consider the annual corporate green reports, think about the whole system and product development cycle, as well as infrastructure to produce and handle materials, them you’ll understand why Tesla is near dead last, even worse then oil companies.
The *average* ownership may be 11 years, but I imagine that to be much shorter for EVs. Two things work against long ownership: The relatively rapid advances in batteries, offering increased range/capability and the trendiness, as most EVs right now are style-conscious, latest-tech vehicles. Therefore I imagine EV owners to keep each car for far less time, more along the lines of the luxury/lease crowd. EVs aren’t bought with the same mindset as someone buying a Corolla – cheap, bland transportation from A to B, and hold onto it for 11+ years. I would imagine EVs to be closer to smartphone enthusiasts – looking to upgrade to the latest and greatest every couple of years.
Of course that doesn’t affect the *vehicle’s* lifetime. But another factor to think about, regarding the value and useful cycle of EVs versus standard gasoline cars.
I picked up the i3 specifically for having a city car.
Longest drive I do is 12 miles. If the battery drops to only 80 miles after 8 years, I’m still fine. 24 miles round trip takes me about 2-3 hours of charging at home. No issue.
My area has hundreds of public charges and many are free although I assume as more people buy EVs access will drop.
I don’t need 200, 300 miles, ever. If I ever come to need it, I’ll rent for a day or two.
Since May 2017, I’ve charged my car 3 times at home. The rest were free top off whenever I went out. Zero gas purchased. Zero oil changes or transmission fluid or even brakes to worry about (Regen braking is amazing).