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Saw this article today about research a company in Germany has been doing regarding making hydrogen easier to transport and use. The hassle still is that getting the elemental hydrogen is currently, not all that green, but IMHO, as solar, geothermal, wind, tidal power develops more, storing...

Saw an article today discussing the progress on solid state batteries...both Toyota, who is working with Panasonic, and Samsung are saying that they expect to have them ready for limited production by 2025. Samsung claims nearly double the energy density. Toyota claims 10% degradation after...

Well, this is a new one that I had not heard of before from people... I had not really driven my i3 much over the winter, but when I did, I noticed that the efficiency wasn't what I'd seen in previous winters. The car got warm, but it didn't seem to do it quite as well as it used to. I think...

Green Car Reports has an interesting video/article posted today on their webpage. https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1127488_test-of-20-evs-in-cold-norway-no-big-surprises-but-some-lost-more-range-than-others Without preconditioning, the i3 they tested lost about 20% of its range in the cold...

My GT sits in the garage a lot. So, it had my winter tires still on it, but an upcoming trip meant it was time to switch back. Well, got a weird error message when trying to reset them to the summer set: "TPMS Interference, cannot reset, proceed cautiously" or something like that. Well, I...

In today's Green Car Reports, there was an article describing a CCS design from the labs at NC State that is about 1/2 the price of most other 50Kw units out there, smaller, and scalable to also support up to 800v and 350Kw charging. It's small enough so that it could be mounted on a pole...

JUst like anything, especially a complex, computer controlled devices, there will be some small number of infant mortality issues when something fails. Assuming your dealership is competent, I'd wait until they've resolved the issue and then try again. The vast majority of people don't have...

I have an Invisihitch on my GT and was just on their website to check on something and found that they list the i3 as an application. Not sure how long that's been there, but it would give people another option for carrying a bike rack verses some of the others out there. When not using it in...

One of my long-term bugaboos is people that use two feet on the pedals and ride the brakes. It's not good for them, and it makes trying to figure out what they're intending to do really difficult. I know commercial vehicles (at least some of them) have a dash light indication when the brakes...

While the displays on the i3 aren't bad, I have a HUD on my other car, and do miss it on the i3. When using the nav on it, I like the prompt about the intersection and road name where I'm supposed to turn and the shape of that intersection as well

There's an article on CNET about a new battery tech from Toyota that can recharge 3x faster than today's typical cells, and is supposed to retain at least 90% after 5000 cycles, or over 14-years at a daily recharge cycle. They plan to market it on one or more of their vehicles in 2019. Others...

I've updated the maps in my i3 once before, and decided it was time, since it has been two years, to do it again. The files have grown, and now exceed the capacity of a 32G USB drive, so I bought a couple of 64G Lexar Jumpdrives at Costco, for a good price. Ensuring they were formatted...

I was in talking to the service manager at the dealership yesterday, and mentioned one occasional issue I have had where I'd get a failed to complete or interrupted charging message on my phone's app. In my case, it always seemed to finish up, and the glitch was a short-term thing. Anyways...

BMW had the maximum regen set higher when the car was introduced, but lowered it to complaints that people couldn't drive it smoothly. Personally, I think that was entirely a personal problem mostly the result of poor coaching by the delivering salesman and people's resistance to actually...

There's a mail-in rebate for purchase of BMW accessories through 28 June of 25% (sent as a pre-paid debit card).

I read somewhere that EV's sold in Japan (may only be vehicles built there) are required to be able to be a backup power source for the grid. This, in response to their nuclear power plant problem, is supposed to help should there be a future power outage. Especially with the larger batteries...

This just got posted on the Bimmerfest site: http://www.bimmerfest.com/news/910420/2017-bmw-i3-comes-with-50-more-battery/ A 50% increased range, few more standard features, optional sunroof, and more. The new batteries are heavier but sit in the same space, so probably includes new springs...

I'm in an area where my cellphone coverage is marginal. I don't have to go out of my condo far, sometimes only a few feet to get a reasonable signal. To help things along, I have a microcell, that acts like a mini cellphone tower in my home that is connected to the internet. To keep my...

Most people have probably figured out that the i3 won't roll opposite of the transmission setting, but I noticed something today that I probably should have seen previously... I was stopped on a moderately steep uphill and happened to glance at the charge graph...it was two bars into...

Mid-September (ie., next month), I'm going to be driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles. From people that have been the coast highway route, what are some of the 'must see' things and places? I'll have four full days, and the last day, I'm planning on spending at the Getty Villa and Museum...