Well known reverse-engineering shop Munro & Associates take apart a BMW i3 and come up very impressed by many aspects of the car.
For example, he points to a section of the frame, where there is an aluminum die casting welded to an extrusion. “Talk to any engineers who knows anything, and they’ll tell you it can’t be done...including me, until I saw that.” (The issue: hydrogen embrittlement). Says Mark Ellis, senior associate at Munro: “When you try to weld the two together, the die casting material tends to crumble. Whatever changes they made to the die casting to allow it to be welded like that is marvelous.”
More past the break:
AutomobileMag.com has published a review of the BMW i3(warning: full-page ad).
When Tesla's Roadster and Model S were first hitting the market, a number of reviews like this were published to inform the public and attract potential customers. Despite the inherent tendency toward hype in such things, they did their job of making EVs seem desirable, or perhaps even more importantly, non-scary. Since then, Teslas have established cachet for EVs, but many people have lamented the lack of more affordable models aimed at the mass-market and resigned themselves to waiting for Tesla to get around to building one in 2017, or 18, or 19...
The BMW i3 might be the company's bid to jump the queue. Its 70 mile range is not going to get you to grandma's house upstate, but it could fill the bill as a commuter car or for urban driving.
My brother, an automotive engineer at Ford, bought one of these and loves it, noting its acceleration is constant (not the variable curve you get with ICEs) and the quiet ride is a boon to his musical enjoyment. He did say he's glad he got the range-extender option, a 2-gallon generator in the trunk, because if you're not fastidious about recharging the car you'll need it to eliminate range-anxiety.
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A rally in Tesla shares [...] briefly vaulted the company's market capitalization past the German luxury carmaker in early Friday trading. The amount of ground Tesla covered was vast: BMW was valued at a $30 billion premium as of early December.
[...] Short interest represented about one fourth of the shares as of the latest quarterly filing.
According to The Drive the three most valuable auto makers are "Toyota, Daimler, and Volkswagen."
Tesla stock sat at $357.32 after market close after trading as high as $376.87 on Friday.
—Silicon Valley Business Journal
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Saturday March 21 2015, @07:25PM
If BMW is the one making more entry level EVs, I don't think we're quite there yet.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by theluggage on Saturday March 21 2015, @09:19PM
Yeah. I really like the concept of this car, but at the end of the day its a sensible small city car at the price of a luxury saloon. Basically you're talking more than twice the price of an expensive small city car like a Smart FourFour, or more than 3 times the price of a sensible small city car - and the thing about small city cars is that although you wouldn't choose too, you can make long trips in them. Even by BMW standards, it makes the Mini look cheap - and a Mini won't flinch at a 300 mile trip.
Knock £10k off the price and I might be tempted...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2015, @10:20PM
> Knock £10k off the price and I might be tempted...
In the US that's possible. There is a federal tax rebate of $7500 and some states have their own in addition to that. For example, Georgia has a $5000 tax rebate, California has a $2500 tax rebate.
(Score: 3, Informative) by theluggage on Saturday March 21 2015, @11:00PM
There is a federal tax rebate of $7500
Yeah, I was kinda factoring in the £5000 UK government grant, which makes the range extender model plus the DC charge option a mere £30000.
As with all government subsidies, you wonder how much it just allows the manufacturers to raise their prices.
(Score: 1) by MostCynical on Sunday March 22 2015, @07:14AM
Tesla proved there was a market.
BMW will prove there is a profit margin, and possibly "mass production" viability.
Efficiency legistlation means car companies need to sell EVs.
GM, Ford etc will catch up when they have to..
Then hydrogen fuel cells will eventually replace EVs and ICE vehicles..
In the mean time, if Porsche and BMW can make a profit selling EVs, why begrudge them?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Sunday March 22 2015, @12:11PM
Then hydrogen fuel cells will eventually replace EVs and ICE vehicles..
I think there may be a niche for both: smaller EVs for regular short/medium distance commuting, larger FCVs for longer distances, maybe hybrid fuel cell/battery vehicles for all-rounders. If you disregard price (which will hopefully fall if production volume ramps up) current EVs are completely practical for certain groups of people.
The big advantage of EVs over hydrogen is home charging - which greatly reduces the need for a new network of refuelling stations to rival gasoline stations to spring up overnight. FCVs would be completely dependent on an extensive network of hydrogen stations. Both EVs and hydrogen have the problem that their green credentials are marred when they both ultimately rely on fossil fuel. However, that's also a problem that the regular electricity grid needs to solve anyway - improve that, and you automatically improve EVs.
The big problem with EVs, and a big advantage for FCVs is people who don't have driveways or garages... but then, installing roadside charging stations isn't rocket science (unlike wrangling liquid hydrogen!)
If it weren't for the price, the i3 would be perfect as a small city car: most of the time you'd be driving it within battery range, recharging overnight at home; you'd either have a second car or rent for planned long trips - but the range extender means that you could take a long/unplanned trip if necessary. Maybe the range extender engine could be replaced with a fuel cell in the future (if you can cram in enough H2!).
Something like a Tesla S is more of a candidate for being replaced by FCVs - if I bought a full-sized saloon car I'd want to use it for spontaneous long trips.