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from the EVs-are-making-a-charge-on-ICEs dept.
The BMW i3 has been on sale since 2014, and in that time, BMW has seen fit to expand its battery size and, by proxy, its range. For the 2019 model year, it's getting yet another battery upgrade, and it's a big one.
The 2019 BMW i3 will come with a 42.2-kWh battery (120 amp-hours), which should permit for up to 153 miles of all-electric driving. This is a roughly 30 percent improvement over the previous 94-Ah battery, which allowed for 115 miles of range. The i3's first battery was just 60 Ah, offering a range of just 81 miles. Oh, how far we've come.
BMW will offer the battery in both variants of the i3. The standard i3 uses a 170-horsepower electric motor, powerful enough to get the little EV to 60 mph in just 7.2 seconds. The i3s, on the other hand, is the sportier trim, offering a 181-hp electric motor and a 6.8-second sprint to 60.
Will EVs (electric vehicles) like this succeed in replacing ICEs (internal combustion engines) as commuter cars?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday September 29 2018, @03:00AM
The numbers I'm running indicate to me that we're within a factor of 2 between EV and ICE, much better than the factor 5+ when they tried to sell tarted up golf carts as EVs back in the 1970s.
It won't be a perfect flip from one to the other, batteries are still quite heavy for the energy they carry, and tanks fill much faster than batteries recharge, but electricity "pipelines" leak less bad stuff into the environment than liquid or gaseous fuel handling does.
With another factor 2 improvement in the EV system (mostly battery energy capacity per unit cost and/or weight), the "well to wheel" efficiency figure will swing to EVs as a favorite, but... ICE performance has more or less peaked out around 30mpg for decades, and instead of continuing to improve to 50+mpg, development has favored bigger vehicles with more aggressive performance - because: which would you rather pay a premium for? Something that pays you back an ROI slowly or something that makes you feel powerful immediately?
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