I got no response to my messages above, and I couldn't find any useful info on the Internet (and I am reasonably good at finding such information) so I thought I would share my experience with those Californians faced with this problem. I drove the car several hundred miles on the REX in all different conditions, no joy. In desperation, I contacted the closest dealer to inquire about this. They gave me some advice that seemed a bit strange, but I was down to try it: (i) drive the car at exactly 55 MPH for 50 miles; or (ii) drive the car and take it up to 65 MPH and let it coast down to 50 MPH, 10 times. I did (i) above- no success. I ultimately decided to take my i3 to the dealer because they said they could do this and I hadn't been able to register/transfer my car for 3 months.
Last week, I took my car to the dealer (50 miles, one way). They checked it out and said there was nothing wrong with the Rex, but I would have to bring the car back when the charge was reduced to the point where the Rex would run. Would have been nice to know before I drove 50 miles to get there. I explained that I had done the Rex reconfig and that would allow the Rex to run at 75 miles charge. They were good with that, but I had about 100 miles on the charge. They didn't want their mechanic to have to drive the car around until the 75 miles mark, so I said I would drive the car and return. I took the car out to the nearest freeway and drove +85 MPH to the next exit (about 10 miles) and returned with the car at about 65% charge.
They took the car back in (ostensibly, for the mechanic to drive the car and accomplish the drive cycle magic). Not long after the service writer told me that when the mechanic hooked the car back up to the scanner, he found that all of my drive cycle timers were green and he had completed the smog cert. They could not explain how this happened, except to say that maybe the motor was just ready to drop into a completed drive cycle and my relatively brief drive did the trick. I find this a bit hard to believe, and the really strange thing is that I was not running the Rex during my relatively high speed run.
Finally, after 3 months I got my reg and stickers. I don't know if my experience above is conclusive, but if I ever have this problem again, I will try the high speed run. I am not messing any further with the ECU config, so this should be a non-issue.
