At the 2017 Frankfurt Auto Show, BMW has unveiled not one, but three important updates to the BMW i electric family. The first one was the exciting and glamorous BMW i Vision Dynamics, a concept which will arrive in 2020. The four-door Gran Coupe is not a classic concept car, but a preview of a real standard vehicle: the study of today will come as a standard vehicle on the road in 2021 with a range of 600 kilometers. It will also have the ability to sprint from 0 to 100 in 4.0 seconds and a top speed of over 200 km/h.
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The next two upgrades were mostly aesthetic without much improvement to the tech side. The i3 facelift comes to fix some of the quirkiness of the original electric city car, while the i3 S aims to deliver a sportier ride to those i3 customers that enjoy the driving feel of a “conventional” BMW. For 2017-2018 models, the BMW i3 features a 94 Ah battery, compared to the previous i3’s 60 Ah battery, good for 114 miles of range in the all-electric version – a 41% improvement over the earlier BEV version of the car.
Yet a longer driving range i3 is scheduled for 2018 which will give customers more than 200 miles on a single charge.
To learn more about the status of the i division, including the iPerformance models, we sat down at the show with Dirk Arnold, the man in charge to steer the electric division towards the future.
“To learn more about the status of the i division, including the iPerformance models, we sat down at the show with Dirk Arnold, the man in charge to steer the electric division towards the future.”
And? Care to share?
The battery upgrade due sometime in late 2018 won’t increase the i3s range to 200 miles. It will most likely have an official EPA range rating of about 150 miles, up 25 – 30% from the current battery.
The current version (94Ah) can drive 150 miles (240km) in good conditions, even longer sometimes, obviously depending on speed and wet/dry road.
It can even go 300 miles or more if it’s all downhill! The US EPA 5-cycle test is really the best test today to reasonably estimate the average distance that most owners will experience under a variety of conditions.
Personally, I think it’s best to use that figure when talking about the range of electric cars, especially when comparing them, with the understanding that owners will experience up to 25% more and 25% less range, depending on thier efficiency and driving conditions.
We can always find someone to say they went much further then the range rating, as well as people that complain that the car can’t go as far as the rating. It’s such a moving target that personally I think it’s best if we just use the official rating so we’re always comparing apples to apples. :)
Very eager to read the missing part of the article :-D
Where’s the wrest of the article? The interview isn’t there….
Weird that the video didn’t embed. Check now.
BMW is progressing forward especially since Tesla set the next benchmark at 200 miles. All the car makers keep saying 2020,2020! We shall see. Not much from the Big 3 but the USA does not have polluted air. Not! We all end up breathing the same air. Millions are dying with healthcare costs Soaring over a finite oil commodity. Mother Nature buried that carbon oil deep for a reason!
Aren’t you a century late? Why do you think electric went from 1/4 of the market to 0? You know, like Model 3 is going to do to 3 Series…
Those Ah capacities are super misleading. The actual battery is upgraded from 22kWh to 33kWh. THat is far more understandable and also comparable to other cars and to vehicle efficiency ratings, such as 13 kWh/100km
40% of BMW sales in Norway are BEV vehicles. Really impressive, especially since they currently only offer one BEV model compared to around 12 ICE models.