New ride, new project thread.

Should be easier to keep up and complete, I owned the ZHP so long I only got through 2006 on her project thread/story. She's gone but never forgotten. I wish I had been able to take pics of them together. Oh well, she went to a great home!

Back Story

Before the i3 was released I was intrigued by the car, crazy styling, carbon fibre reinforced plastic body on aluminum frame, electric, wow. I've always been a fan of hatchbacks and wagons both of which are rare for BMW in the US, this car seemed pretty sweet.

My better half and I both signed up for the i3 drive event, this was a pack of i3's that were touring the country from dealer to dealer pre-release for persons interested to sign up and take one for a test drive. We loved the regenerative breaking after just a short time in the car, loved the now non-US spec sunroof also. The car seemed very ahead of its time.

That fall, 2014, I was contacted by BMW about taking one home for an "extended test drive" unfortunately I signed up for it while house sitting for my better half's mom as they were both in Florida visiting family. The extended test drive car was a super base model solar orange but did have REx which I needed as far out as I was staying. I found myself very frustrated with the experience. It was taking forever to charge, range anxiety even with the REx was really real, I went out to a free public level 2 charging station and it still took forever just to recoup what I had blown to get out there. I had a lot of complaints about the car and experience in general, officially no sunroof option in the US, charged too slowly, I could go on and on.

So I decided against it for the time being and put the car out of my head for a few months. But it slowly started to creep back in; then I slowly but surely started educating myself more on the car. From the factory the car is set to charge as slow as friggin possible on both level 1 and level 2 chargers. I learned that with some coding you could unlock the REx and expand the useable fuel tank to 2.4 gal (from 1.9) to almost completely stomp out range anxiety. Most of my complaints and issues were either resolved or I learned how I could deal with them, well, except for not getting the kick-ass sunroof in the US!

So April, 2015 rolls around and out of the blue, I don't even remember where I saw it, I found that someone had gotten a crazy deal on a left-over 2014 i3. I'm trying to remember what brought me back to actually looking at them again, I'm not sure what happened but when I realized how cheap I could be driving one I decided it was time to let Molly go. This all happened very quickly, so quickly I am still in shock that it happened actually. I owned my ZHP for nearly 9 years and thought we might just go on until death, but when I realized I could afford the i3 I jumped ship very quick.

So I consulted friends and family and determined just the right i3 for me, every option, my first color choice was Laurel Grey, second was Capparis White. I searched and searched and searched, my local dealer only had a silver rex base model, no thanks, the closest I could find a car that would work for me was Atlanta. So I joined an Atlanta i3 FB group and started doing more research, one dealer had two Laurel Grey's and a Capparis, another had a Capparis White, all loaded up the same. Once Molly was gone for sure I first tried to get my local dealer to get me one of these 4 cars from Atlanta. This proved feeble, they were not interested in doing anything of the sorts. In the mean time one of the 4 cars got sold, the Capparis White at the dealer I ended up buying from. So I tried to buy one of the Laurel Grey's from the other dealer in Atlanta and had a very very bad experience. The sales person, an older male, was very old-school and he was jacking with the lease terms too much and the payment was higher than expected. So the other dealer that had the now sold Capparis White i3 had a large presence on the ATL BMW i3 FB group as well as the more general BMW i3 FB group. They were actually trying to get me to get in contact with them initially, before I messed with my local dealer or the other dealer in ATL. I wish I had reached out to them first, they were AWESOME!

United BMW Roswell in Atlanta, GA. My sales person and his sales manager were amazing. They were straight forward and upfront on the pricing of the car, no games, no funny business. Unfortunately they did not have a 2014 for me anymore though. I might have been able to have them find me one through their dealer connections as they are a part of a larger chain of dealerships, another guy in Nashville ended up doing this and getting a 2014, but it wasn't loaded up like I wanted. My sales person had a 2015 that was still on the boat that he ended up selling me, every option, first color choice, straight forward on the pricing (below invoice before tax incentive). Somehow the payment ended up being $100 less on a 2015 as opposed to the 2014 from the competing dealer, that guy was jacking the figures around that much. I might have been able to squeeze them a bit more, but I didn't have a car and my patience was already worn out between my local dealer and the first dealer in ATL. I thought they were straight forward and upfront about everything and I just said YES PLEASE!

I had to wait about a week for the car to come in, they offered to just ship me the car for about $600 but I really wanted to go get it. Driving an electric car long distance can be a challenge so I prepared by buying a coding cable and installing Virtual Box on my Mac as well as Windoze 8.1 and the software that I needed to code the car after purchase. I could have flown over to ATL from MEM but a direct flight was about $600, with one stop, $250. I happened to be off in the middle of the week that week, but my future mother in law was again in Florida visiting her mom and my better half and I were dog/cat/fish/house sitting for her along with our two pups. So us driving over in our CRV to pick it up was out of the question. So I ended up on a MegaBus for $22.75, took my first Uber ride from our house to the buss stop, left MEM at midnight Wednesday night on the MegaBus Memphis time and arrived in ATL at 9am Atlanta time. Took their subway/train system as far north as I could, then took a city bus to the dealership. Arrived at about 10:30. Yup, pretty much public transportation all the way to pick up my MSRP $55,850 vehicle, haha, I'm so cheap! At that point I had spent about $30 including food.

I got out of the dealership around 12:30 Atlanta time and headed to a charging location I had pre-determined I would go to to code the car. It was recommended that the coding take place while plugged in. I had strategically picked this place because I estimated I would be near, at or below 75% battery left which is where you can tell the car to "Hold State of Charge" which kicks the REx on. What do you know, that place was unavailable, just my luck. So another place was another 15 or so miles down the road, I headed that way. It was a Walgreens and the station required some sort of card to start charging the car, I went into Walgreens to attempt to buy this card or set one up and they said that although it was in their parking lot, they had nothing to do with it. Awesome sauce, I was about 45 miles into my 425'ish mile journey and had already used 52% of the battery.

So I pulled the car over into the shade, rolled down the windows and decided to attempt coding the car without being plugged in. I wasn't even sure that my coding setup was going to work, I hadn't been able to test it out on a car prior to the trip. It was a bit of a nervous moment. It should be noted, however, that without coding, the car would have drained down to 6% and the REx would have kicked in. So long as the REx could keep up then I could have just driven the car home that way. But it was hot and I was on the highway, not the best conditions for REx to keep up. Coding went fine with minimal hiccups and minimal learning curve. It took about an hour because I had to pop back and forth and was very cautious about everything I did. I plan to do more coding as there are some other features and preferences I would like to change but I have yet to have time.

The remainder of the trip went pretty well, the unlocked REx and additional fuel capacity gave me about 75 miles of range between fill-ups. There were a few places that I could have stopped in to charge but I really just wanted to get home. I didn't get much sleep on the MegaBus and I was a bit too excited to sleep the night prior to that. So every hour I pulled in and filled up and walked around a bit to help keep my alertness. I ran at least 65 all the way home with the AC on and in those remaining 380 miles or so the battery dropped from 48% to 22% over the course of the trip, the REx wasn't able to hold the state of charge with those conditions.

Picked her up with 7 miles on the clock, got home that evening with 425'ish. Absolutely no other hiccups, just lots of stares and I did burn up some of that charge when a 1st gen Caddy CTS-V wanted to play near Talledega, go figure, the i3 held its own pretty well all things considered!

In the end it cost me just over $70 in food, fuel and transportation to go get the car. Basically I saved enough money to pay for a level 2 home charger, still searching for a good deal on one though.

Here are some pics from the trip.



First pic was from behind the wheel, I needed to get on the road! 9 miles on the clock.



No can do.



First 100 miles, found out the nave can do satellite images, not that helpful though, just a bunch of green.



Highway view of Talledega, that might not be spelled right.



Bugged up but home, well, at the future mother in-law's, safely!



Ready for his or her first day of commuting duty.



Feeble attempt to wash off the bugs.



Shined up!



Had too much fun!



Not Imola, not a ZHP, but hello red e46.





My best estimated range so far, 180 miles total!