The BMW i3 Electric Car. Can it handle deep snow? Freezing cold?
I just got home took the bmw i3 for a cold weather battery test now this is the 2017 bmw i3 range extender so it has the battery that’s supposed to be good for 114 miles on a charge now you know that’s what the manufacturer says that’s never what happens that’s always in ideal conditions like 55 miles an hour wind at your back flat road and no wind in reality this
Thing gets somewhere around 20 less than that so maybe figure somewhere around what would that be 94 miles on battery before the range extender kicks in so we’ll compare it to that because you’re never going to get an exact science on this i’m going to show you where we started with the battery exactly how many miles we drove we drove it 70 miles an hour almost
All the way there until the very end you know it slows down and then we’ll be able to count like how many miles did it say we get on the battery how many did we actually get and then we can compare that to the 94 miles you would normally get so i’ve got all the videos and pictures of all this stuff so we’ll get to that and also the range extender we’re going to
Talk about what happens when that kicks in when you’re outside at the highway at 70 miles an hour stay tuned okay we’re getting ready to leave we’re going to set this at muskegon michigan that’s where we’re going today to the lake michigan lakeshore give this a minute to catch up here because it’s changed locations now you’ll see it says we got zero miles that’s
The tripometer and by battery range on the bottom right 57. so 57 miles range now what’s that based on well it’s based on the fact that we’re taking the highways all the way there that’s what we put into the nav system it’s based on the fact that it’s 20 degrees fahrenheit you can figure out what that is in celsius but it’s cold and we have 40 miles to get there
Also since it’s so cold you better be sure that we are running the heat so the seat heaters but also this heater this one that’ll run off the big battery and we’ve got it set to 76 why because we like to be comfortable but here we go and let’s just see how we get along and we’ll share updates on the way let’s talk just for a second about the range extender so the
Range extender is not a hybrid it’s not a separate engine that drives the car what it is is a tiny little gasoline engine in the back what it does is charges the battery so on this trip on the way home we’re going 70 miles an hour when we get down to where we have just a few miles left boom the range extender kicks in and you don’t even know it except it lights
Up on the screen you can see it’s on and you don’t know it because you’re still driving an electric battery power that’s the only motor that runs this car so the range extender all it does is charges the battery and what’s incredible is that it charges it fast enough to just keep going then later on in the day we tested it again because we have one highway in
Michigan just north of us 131 north where the speed is 75 miles an hour so we did the same thing we had the battery down to next to nothing we jumped on going north up to 75 miles an hour the range extender kicks in and you don’t even know it because it charges somehow somehow charges the battery fast enough to where you keep running on the battery motor there is
No gasoline engine that runs the bmw rex range extender all it does is charges the battery but what will impress you is that it charges it fast enough so you can keep going 75 miles an hour it makes a little bit of a noise i tried to capture the noise on my phone i’ll play what i captured but you don’t hear the noise on the highway you only hear it when you get
Off the highway at slower speeds it’s like it does have an exhaust pipe stainless steel never has to be replaced exhaust that you’ll never even notice unless you climb underneath the car so that’s the bid on the range extender it’s amazing i i don’t like hybrid cars i’m sorry sorry i just don’t like them because i don’t want to have a gasoline engine an electric
Motor and worry maybe it’s my generation maybe it’s just me what’s going to go bad too many moving pieces you know i never used to like power windows because i always thought hey that’s one more thing to break maybe it’s just me i don’t like hybrids this is not a hybrid this is an all-electric car with a built-in charging system that’s the way to look at the bmw
I3 range extender a fantastic automobile and the more i drive it the more i like it i don’t love it i love people not things but i come as close as you can come to loving something is how i feel about the bmw i3 okay just wanted to point that out okay here we are at the end of the trip see zero miles to go and this is interesting you’ll see remember we started
Out and said we had 57 miles of range we still have 37 but yet we went 40 miles so what does that tell you well while it wasn’t completely accurate it didn’t leave us high and dry the gasometer gave us a little bit of a cushion of course everything changes the wind and everything else but now in perfect weather you would probably get 94 miles not 57 so take that
40 away from that that’s about a 20 mile difference so in conclusion you do lose a little bit of range in the cold weather which we found also with our nissan leaf but what we also learned is the gasometer on the bmw i3 is so accurate at least accurate in the sense that it won’t tell you have more than you have so that’s a good thing hey now look this is what we
Saw today this is us flying our drone out over this frozen lighthouse in lake michigan some sites you can only see from the air and we’re parked on shore and i’m driving the drone actually from the bmw i3 so that’s pretty cool right just an iced over lighthouse on beautiful lake michigan there’s the back side of it not too shabby so that’s our best shot at a
Winter weather driving battery capacity test with a bmw i3 what we found and like we talked about a little while ago the gasometer the thing that says hey you’re going to get about this far on the bmw it’s so incredible the way it’s affected by how high you have the fan on the heater turned up or when you put in your root instructions in the navigator and then
Navigator the navigation uh bit the map and then it knows you’re gonna be on the highway and knows when you’re not and it factors all that in and gets as close to any as any car i’ve ever had electric or gasoline none of these cars gasometers can factor in everything but the bmw i3 comes very close so rather you may not get the miles you would get in the winter
At the cold temperatures we were at that you do in the summer however what you do get is a very accurate trustworthy guess at when you’re gonna have to stop and charge all right that’s it chad from drivinglightnew.com the bmw i3 winter test continue next time we’ll go over the traction control in some detail because we got some nice information back from you guys
And a comment that i want to share on that for now if you want to watch another video if you haven’t seen it yet here’s where we tried to get the bmw i3 stuck in some pretty deep nasty looking snow so give that a watch if you would comment and subscribe if you would we appreciate you have a great day
Transcribed from video
BMW i3 Winter Range. Is it WAY Worse?? We tested at 70 MPH 20 degrees Fahrenheit By Drive The Lightning