Now I’ve got back in to the “blogging habit”, I have a ton of stuff that piled up over the past 4-5 months while I commuted (YUCK!) on the M20 & M25 to work. For those outside the UK, these are two major motorways that often have traffic problems. The worst experience I had was when my 1-1:15h commute took over 4 hours! At one stage, I did consider getting another car for this as we have a Renault Megane Coupet Cabriolet, but it guzzles the gas. Being a fan of electric / hybrid cars I did some investigation and realised that hybrids like the Lexus, Prius and whatever else are pretty much a waste of money as their efficiency is about the same as a modern petrol engine. The only thing that made sense was an electric with a range-extender which is basically a petrol powered generator which can charge the battery.

After quite a bit of research, the car which appealed to me most (and which I fell in love with as soon as I sat in it) was the i3. With a range of around 200 miles, a 120 mile round trip should be easy. Luckily I decided to do a test drive for a day and found out that all is not quite what it seems as you’d only get anywhere near that range if you did 55mph, which is not really what you’d want to do when the speed limit here is 70mph. The end result was that I had to stop for fuel on the way back – I may of just made it on one tank (which only holds 9l – huh?) but didn’t want to find out… Even if so, this would mean that I would have to fully recharge and refuel the car every day – that’s a bit too much effort.

With all the cons out the way, what are the pros? Well, a lot!

If you did shorter commutes or lived in a major city, this would be a very viable option as the interior is amazing – this shot doesn’t do it justice, but it all just feels so open. Add on to that the amazing acceleration of an electric vehicle and a top speed of just over 90mph, it can definitely hold it’s own in cities, towns and motorways.

Then, there’s a large list of features which really are quite innovative and show BMW’s commitment to creating a future full of electric cars:

• Active Cruise Control – either cruises at your set speed or the speed of the traffic in your lane and will (safely) slow down if someone cuts in front of you
• Traffic Jam Assist – will drive the car at speeds of up to 24mph on the motorway – this is absolutely amazing and eerie! You do have to keep a finger on the wheel so it knows you can take over if necessary
• Parking Assist – if you never mastered parallel parking, don’t worry – this will do it for you
• Connected Drive Services – assistance with anything – it connects you with a call centre that can answer any question and download routes to your car. It doesn’t stop there though, the navigation can show you public transport information and incorporate that in to your journey!
• A Remote App – lets you monitor your car and even heat it up before you get in it – great for winter
• Connected Drive Your car can connect to the internet and act as a hotspot, with no data restrictions – great for a long drive, if you could do it ;-) Along with that you can get Online Entertainment and Speech recognition for emails and messaging
• Usage of other BMW’s – for the times when you need a petrol car, you can loan one from BMW – I’m sure I read this, but can’t find a reference now – I think this was at a ‘reduced rate’ or something. A great idea that acknowledges we’re not there yet with electric cars.

All in all, it’s a pretty amazing car, which I would of bought (well, probably leased) if only it had the range. It’s really quite revolutionary with its carbon-fiber chassis and other innovations so I look forward to the time (hopefully only a year or so) when they have a version that has more range by just increasing the size of the petrol tank.

Postscript – when researching this, I found a statement that BMW anticipate fully automated driving on European motorways by 2020 – can’t wait – that’s only 5 years away!