The longer look down the road

[denkikun]

Hi My BMW i3 guys,

I've just joined the forum a few minutes ago so that I could start a conversation about my trepidation and indecisiveness on whether to buy an i3.
I want to mention that Yes, I did search the forum and didn't find anyone else hitting on the topic that I want to bring up.

Quick background: I currently drive a 2003 VW 1.8t 5 Spd wagon with 127K miles on it. I have owned it for 12 years, and it looks great and is excellent. I have done 100% of the work on this one and the previous 20 or so cars I've owned - ranging from oil changes to swapping out transmissions that have failed. I am extremely sensitive to having to pay a bunch of money to someone to work on my car, or owning anything that cannot readily be repaired.

I am completely enamored with Electric cars. My brother and I converted a 1974 Triumph tr6 to full electric on the cheap (12 deep cycle marine batteries with 18 mile range haha), and have some experience driving a few EVs: 1st gen Nissan leaf, newest Nissan Leaf (owned by my father in law in Japan) also my dad has a Tesla 3.

So..... here's my actual question. I want to buy an i3. But, I want to buy a 2015 60ah car, drive it for a few years, and then replace/upgrade the battery pack - if it needs it. If I purchase at $15K and then spend a few thousand on a battery in a couple of years to freshen it up, I'm thinking that I should be good.

If I drive the car for 3 years and then find that there are no options of battery replacement or upgrade that are even remotely financially reasonable, I am likely going to be the first person to replace the entire drivetrain of the BMW i3 with a nice old inline 6 engine and get rag 5 speed from a late 80s BMW E30.....

Any advice for a guy like me? (other than 'suck it up and lay down big money on a 2019 version', or 'stick with your gasoline car because your mindset doesn't jibe with owning a modern EV')

Thanks!!!
Peter

 

[jadnashuanh]

There's really no room in an i3, assuming you want to retain any passenger room, to put a typical engine and transmission. While an engine might weigh similar to the battery pack, their relative size and shapes are quite different. Remodeling the CFRP structure to accommodate it isn't a likely candidate, either, otherwise, you'd likely significantly alter the structural integrity. Maybe if you could find a flat four or something, but then running a radiator and coolant lines would be a big deal. The engineering and fabrication would be daunting, lots more than replacing an engine with an engine.

Right now, a replacement battery pack is a bit more than a couple thousand. After they start to go beyond their battery warranty, there MIGHT be some aftermarket or rebuilder choices that would likely be less. Even on a 2015, you'd have about 4 more years of battery warranty unless the vehicle has LOTS of miles on it. It's true that the battery costs have come down, as the current one is about twice the original, and the vehicle price didn't change much.

 

[denkikun]

Thanks for the reply!
I'm sure you know that I wasn't really suggesting that I'd just plop an old straight six in there.... that would really go against what the i3 is, and means.
My main point was that I am having an "inner struggle" with giving up the control of being able to fix the car myself, and feel really uncomfortable relying on essentially blackbox technology that I cannot fix.

Unlike most who have range anxiety about electric cars I have absolutely none at _all.... in fact, I actually embrace an opportunity to have to drive less, and - god forbid- modify my behavior to meet the limits of the car, hahaha. Sooo many Americans would say, ' well can you drive the EV to Florida from Ohio?!'. Well heck no ya can't, and you should be riding high speed rail for such a distance anyway...

I guess I have "blackbox" tech anxiety.

I COMPLETELY embrace the idea of full electric cars, but it's giving up that feeling of control in not being able to repair or upgrade. I'm just a wrench turning guy who pays 10 grand cash for a car and then drives it for 15 years - fixing anything that breaks along the way by myself.

I have a really nice Dyson cordless vacuum cleaner that suddenly refused to charge one day..... I don't want a giant version of that vacuum cleaner with wheels and a BMW emblem on it that mysteriously "breaks" in an electronic sort of way... but.. I so want to own an i3. Therein lies the rub...

 

[jfran2]

I found myself last year in a very similar situation to you, but I was just impulsive enough to take the plunge. I suspect part of the reason was that my ICE car is a 15 year old Saab convertible, and although there are a lot of things I can and have fixed on it, there is also a fair amount of the car that is controlled by black boxes. And this is 15 years old! I finally realized that my DIY mechanic days are numbered if I want to drive a modern car. Once I came to that conclusion, it was easy to step into my 2014 i3 Rex. I will still attempt to fix stuff that breaks as I can, but I'm resigned to having a closer relationship with the BMW service department than I ever have in the past. And so far, I haven't regretted it for a minute! The i3 is just a blast to drive!

 

[denkikun]

Thanks for that jfran

Do you really have to visit the BMW service dept much with the i3?
I DO have a friend who is a BMW mechanic.... maybe I can mow his lawn or something in return for advice/work on the i3 hahaha
I literally have never paid someone to work on any car I've owned for the past 30 years... yes, I'm a nut job haha

 

[gt1]

All modern cars are controlled by interconnected locked down computers. The fact that i3 is electric doesn't make that much difference.

 

[denkikun]

Thanks for the response, it just comes down to a fundamental shift in thinking..... As I think about it a bit more, my current dilema is similar to when I bought my first laptop computer in 2002. Up until that point I had been building my own minitower windows machines and was able to swap out any components that went bad when they went wrong or when I wanted to upgrade.. When I decided to go laptop I had to give up any chance of upgrade or swapability of anything that failed.. (besides maybe RAM) So I went with a Macbook and never looked back - typing on one now (although 4 computers later haha). I teach Industrial Design and focus on "emotional endurance" - the lasting bond between people and products, which complicates things more... I am going to go ahead and check out of the conversation here so that I don't sound like too much of a broken record... Thanks to those who weighed in with comments....

I will test drive an i3 this weekend to see if there's some magic the way there was with my first mac laptop

 

[Timjohn]

I think you must know by now that there is not as much to maintain on an EV. With the regenerative breaking, the break pads will last a long time and with your mechanical skills this won't be a difficult task. I ordered a 2020 model with a REX 600 cc engine. Now without the 600 cc engine you have even less to worry about (BEV model). Even then this little engine, requires an oil change once a year.

Black box thinking I can understand your worry but research this a bit more. There is an iPhone app, BimmerCode, that you can use to alter the parameters of the software. With a range extender (REX), the one advantage is during a long highway trip you can change the start point of the REX. At less than 75% of the battery turning on the REX will "hold" the charge of the battery and hopefully relieve range anxiety. Also change the fuel tank capacity (just in the software) can help as well.

Now for road test. This is what sold me. It is a fun car! The most fun, other than my motorcycle, that I have ever driven. It goes like stink from a stop light. I have driven the Leaf, Kona and the Niro. Nice cars with better range but since I live in the core of a big city, 150 miles of range is more than enough for me. I noted my travel with my ICE vehicle over the last 6 months and my average daily driving is 9.25 miles. Those other EV's felt bigger and not as nimble. Good luck with it. One recommendation...get a 2017 if you want to buy used. It has the bigger battery.

 

[jadnashuanh]

If you regularly tax the available range of your EV, you might want the REx. Not everyone does. I've never been stranded with my BEV, but if it's going to be close, I'll dig out my ICE which sits in the garage on a battery tender most of the time. BMW didn't release their EV until battery tech got good enough to cover the average person's daily needs with a margin. Over the time since released, it has grown to nearly double. I get offers from the dealer regularly to upgrade to the newest ones. The original one still meets my needs and drives as new, so I see no need. I do have the option of using an ICE. If that's an infrequent thing, you might find it cheaper to rent one on those occasions, or swap with a friend. As was said in the original design discussions, the REx was only added as a marketing thing for the original fairly small batteries. In most of the rest of the world, they've stopped selling that model. When it comes to new things in cars, the US tends to lag the rest of the world. But, our country is huge in comparison to most, and our fuel is cheap, so people tend to arrange their lives with that in mind, and our cars tend to follow. Try driving a US pickup on the tiny roads in many places of the world...it can be a major pain. Throw in the fuel costs, and it's a bit of a pain in the pocket, too.

 

[3pete]

I pulled the trigger on getting a 2014 thinking the BMW warranty would alleviate any concerns of the state of health of the battery for a while and after that the costs for a replacement would come down in similar proportions to what the Prius and LEAF has seen.

The i3 has cooling integrated with the battery which arguably makes it more complicated, but that's also an issue for engine swaps and people/shops already do those. There have been a few examples of people swapping batteries in the i3, so hopefully by the time we need it, it will be a little more mainstream. It would be great to swap/upgrade to the 120ah version when needed.

If there are no battery options way down the road and you need to go the ICE conversion route to keep your i3 running, my nomination is for a Hayabusa engine. Unless you want to drop an LS1 in it, of course...

 

[frictioncircle]

Hi Peter / denkikun –

What an interesting post!

Given the stable Al / CF construction of the i3 & i8, corrosion risks to the structure should be minimal.

Regarding electronics, forum member gt1 posts that the cars are locked down. I'm not a BMW insider but I do know that their GT1 PC setup is a fixture in a BMW dealer's service bay. The home office really doesn't want anyone working on the cars other than their dealers' techs, so gt1's thoughts here may be something to consider.

However, a few European i3 owners have upgraded their battery packs. My hope is that, as time passes, BMW will stop caring about keeping a vise-hold on their first EV platform, and a shop like Electron Automotive in Orange, CA (I have no connection to them) will develop new battery solutions for the i3 as she ages.

 

[jadnashuanh]

Depending on which battery pack you start out with, and your actual needs, it could be many, many years before the pack's capacity drops below your real needs. I'm talking maybe a couple of decades. At that point, with the advances, you probably would want something else, regardless. Somewhere in that timeframe, I'd be surprised if there were not some pack replacement options, either from the factory, or aftermarket. The suspension bits, etc., would tend to wear and need replacement, but those aren't all that special. You may not have aftermarket options for all of them, though. The good thing is that with the minimal changes on the i3 since inception, that makes it more likely an aftermarket company might find it profitable to make parts available.

BMW designed the battery management logic to extend their life to avoid warranty costs. Hopefully, their logic is valid, but it seems like it is so far. Having lots of them starting to fail now would put a big shadow on the EV push for everyone.

 

[3pete]

Having lots of them starting to fail now would put a big shadow on the EV push for everyone.

"Fail" is the interesting word there because it could mean a lot of different things depending on who's judging it. All EVs are already failures according to one of my coworkers, because even Teslas can "only go a couple hundred miles, and then how long does it take to recharge them? Like a couple hours, right?" :roll:

But that line of thinking is similar to your point of "Depending on which battery pack you start out with, and your actual needs..." and similar to my threshold before I got a 60ah car:

Daily Commute * 2 (in case I forget my badge/ lunch/ pants) <= EPA rating * 70% (warranted SOH threshold) * 70% (adjustment for cold weather)

How much of a buffer should a buyer be expected to build in? Even though my specific use case for a vehicle would work if the battery hits 70% state of health, I'll consider it a battery failure if it gets to that point. I'll reserve judgement on whether it's an EV failure though depending on BMW's response and what aftermarket options there are.

On that note, if restoring the car essentially back to new (or even better with a 90ah or 120ah upgrade) is nearly as simple as changing the batteries in the remote control then that's an opportunity for EVs to shine compared to gas vehicles. The only real sticking point right now is price. If BMW wanted to buy some brand goodwill they could offer some scheme of free/heavily subsidized battery swaps/ upgrades to anyone below 85% state of health, or even any i3 owner at all.

I'm not saying they'll do that but if they wanted to essentially buy some brand loyalty, it would be an option. They could even take a play out of cell phone manufacturer's book and essentially 'lease' the battery to you with guaranteed upgrades every 2 years with the latest battery tech and they'd get more of that sweet, juicy, monthly revenue on the books that BMW seems to covet so much.

 

[jadnashuanh]

GIven that the i3 hasn't changed the battery holder design, nor upgraded the recharging capability (the bigger batteries take proportionally longer to recharge), upgrading the old pack should be fairly easy. Given that the price/Kw has also gone down, a much larger pack can be sourced for what the original cost, minus the labor to install it. But, at least in the USA, we're closer to a throw-away society rather than one that repairs older stuff. That's probably one reason BMWUSA chose not to offer the battery upgrades that they have in some other markets.

As battery tech and recharging opportunities become improved, the case for EVs becomes better. In my case, supporting an ICE and a BEV, I'd like to get back to one, and am contemplating the X5 that should have a large enough battery to do my normal routine 95% of the trips, but will have the gas tank and engine to perform the remaining with essentially no compromises except maybe in price and maneuverability. I'm getting stiffer, and bending to get in and out of my i3 is getting harder...that's part of my consideration, too.

 

[jlangham]

I think I'm going to contact Rich from Rich Rebuilds (the YouTube Tesla rebuilder). He just rebuilt an i8 and maybe he'll take on upgrading my 2014 i3 to a bigger battery. Then, maybe, BMW would take notice. Tesla took notice of him when he bought a used Tesla and showed all the ugly underbelly of that process.

Maybe that's what some of these companies need. Guys willing to take some risks, document the issues (YouTube, etc.) before changes will be made.

 

[Obioban]

I also do all the work on all my ICE cars. The truth of a BEV i3 is... it pretty much doesn't need any work done. It has ~8 bushings (that are cheap), brakes last forever, and the only fluid that needs changing is brake fluid.

Used low mileage batteries from crashed i3s currently go for $3000-5000. Swapping them out is pretty easy (remove retaining bolts and one plug, lower out of car, assembly is opposite of disassembly).

It's a brave new world, and it's opened up a ton of weekend free time for me...

... though I still have the ICE cars, as the ICE driving experience just doesn't compare.

 

[sipabit]

Dear OP, the latter statement is about right.

To date, I've only seen photos of a single instance where the batteries were replaced. Keep in mind that they are about $2,200 per cell and there's I believe 8 of them so financially it doesn't make sense to "upgrade" with denser batteries for more range. Keep in mind that's only the cost for the cells and does not include installation (assuming BMW would even offer to do that here in the USA). So no, don't do it. Just buy a 94ah one if you really want more range.

If you're looking for the shell and plan to pop a gas engine in there, just keep in mind the size of the "engine bay" up front isn't large (reason for the dash being so deep is b/c it has a very short hood).

If you're looking for this to be a project car, this wouldn't be it. Stick with what you like and that appears to be small gas cars. Gas cars will be around for the next 50 years at least. Don't let the green people fool you into thinking gas cars are going to be replaced by EV's anytime soon. We won't even see half the car sales be electric within 20 years so you're in good company for tinkerers who like to mod cars.

 

[alohart]

Keep in mind that they are about $2,200 per cell and there's I believe 8 of them so financially it doesn't make sense to "upgrade" with denser batteries for more range.

To be more precise, an i3 battery pack contains 8 modules with each module containing 12 cells. The smallest replaceable unit that BMW sells is a module. I'm sure that clever people could replace individual cells if they could obtain them.