A Canadian man bought a BMW i3 after having seen on the automaker’s website that the car is capable of driving 124 miles per charge. Upon taking ownership, that man was unable to get the car to reach 120 miles of range, leading him to sue BMW. Now, 10 years have elapsed and though he won some money, in the end, he lost. Allow me to explain.
Do I think it’s possible to hit 124 miles of range in a 2014 BMW i3? Well, I happen to own a BMW i3 with a brand new replacement battery, and I actually put the car through a range test. What did I discover?
I managed to travel just under 100 miles on a single charge in almost optimal conditions — mild weather, no air conditioning, low vehicle speeds:
Of course, I had two extra passengers, and I did the test over two days, so it’s possible the battery needed to condition a bit to be most efficient on day two, which it wouldn’t have had to do had I done the test all in a single day. Still, getting 120 miles would have been insanely challenging, even if I hadn’t had passengers, even if I hadn’t had that heavy range extender in the back, and even if I had a heat pump (that doesn’t make much of a difference anyway, according to what I’ve seen online).
I say this because if you look at ~2014 forum posts from then-new BMW i3 owners, very, very few folks were getting anything close to 124 miles of range even when they really went for it. But there are a couple of examples of folks who’ve pulled it off, like user “marfuh” on the German Going Electric forum. Here’s what he wrote back in 2014 (translated via Google Translate):
I’ve already complained a lot today but I’ve been pleasantly surprised. I thought I’d drive through the greater FMM area and just see what I can do with economical driving… and lo and behold, 212 km… 6 km to go…
Well, it works… the weather just has to stay like this
[…]
It was almost
worth it…I just wanted to know
When asked if he drove slowly, marfuh said yes, replying:
Yes, like a grandma…but I just wanted to know….
You can’t drive like that…it doesn’t make a good impression on other road users about the i3.
Back in July of 2014, a BMW i3 Forum user named “daoasis” posted: “Range Not As Advertised – Only 129km on full charge” That post read:
The marketed specifications on the i3 are 160/180/200km on a full charge depending on the driving mode based on the Canadian site: http://www.bmw.ca/ca/en/newvehicles/i/i3/2013/showroom/technical_data.html
And on the US site it shows as 190km with a 160km* mean custoemr value with no explanation of the astrisks: http://www.bmw.com/com/en/newvehicles/i/i3/2013/showroom/technical_data.html
However, everytime my i3 is fully charged it only shows up to 129km range.
Does anyone else have this issue and is it doing this just to be safe and fool you to not test the actual range?
Thanks,
Replies to that thread made it clear that 200 km is a bit of a stretch. Here’s what forum member ASUN wrote:
200km seems far-fetched even in perfect scenarios.
The advertised range on the Canadian and US sites does seem out of line with the UK figures. Here they claim 80-100 miles and I get around 90 with our Rex. Some, such as Frank who must be a very smooth driver, get considerably more, some less.
Your 129km seems just about right to me. Though, as Frank says, the real range is almost always more than predicted. Unlike the Leaf we had previously where the guessometer was always optimistic, sometimes ridiculousl
If one drives slowly in warm temperatures on level, dry roads without much wind and with the climate control system off, 200 km is certainly possible. In real-world driving conditions in warm, dry Hawaiian weather in our 2014 BEV, I have driven 160 km with 10 km of estimated remaining range. This included a 300 m ascent and descent and speeds ranging as high as 100 kph but mostly at 70 kph.
I’m guessing that BMW’s initial range estimates were based on the unrealistic NEDC standard used in Europe
Two and a half years later, and daoasis provided an update on that thread (I added the bold):
So 2.5 years in and now I need the car to make it at minimum 114km in an Ontario Canada winter. That’s the distance from the last charging station to my cottage. Unfortunately, at 4.5 celsius, the car will only make it 100km in eco pro + mode.
I’ve contact both BMW Toronto and BMW Canada and let them know that they falsely advertised the range on the 2014 i3. When I purchase the vehicle, the website said the following:
When I purchased the vehicle, it was advertised with the following ranges in the different driving modes:
Comfort: 160km
Eco Pro: 180km
Eco Pro +: 200kmSomewhere between Nov 8, 2014 and Dec 10, 2014 BMW updated their marketing material on the same web pages to the following:
Comfort: 130km
Eco Pro: 160km
Eco Pro +: 156km (20% above Comfort Mode)They acknowledged that their previous material was bogus and that 160km is the top limit in Eco Pro +, which has been my experience. Now with the cold weather, I’m getting less than half of the marketed 200km range when I purchased the car.
It there are any other Canadian 2014 i3 owners that purchased their vehicles prior to Dec 3, 2014 (approximately when their web site was updated) please let me know as I a likely to file a suit against them. I have given them every opportunity to make this right for me but they have both decided to not take any responsibility for their false claims.
I haven’t confirmed it, but I’m fairly sure this “daoasis” is a man named Ronen Kleiman, who has been legally battling it out with BMW since 2017, as CBC News reported back then:
From the article that goes with the video above:
He did a lot of research before locking onto an $970/month, four-year lease for a new 2014 BMW i3 — an all-electric vehicle, the first model of its kind for automaker.
“It was the first fully electric car, kind of lower, more affordable price range… This car, as advertised, filled all the needs that I required of the vehicle,” Kleiman says.
“But right away I knew something was wrong.”
The article notes how BMW changed its car’s advertised range from 200 km down to 160 km. CBC even provides a Wayback Machine link that shows BMW’s old claim:
This review by Autotrader.ca even makes mention of the possible 200 km of range in EcoPro+ mode. Here’s BMW’s response in that 2017 CBC article:
“Battery-electric vehicles can be significantly impacted by driver behaviour, the vehicle’s external environment, and the consumption of on-board features,” Barb Pitblado from BMW Group Canada wrote in an email to Go Public.
Fast forward to this month, and we have a new story by Automotive News Canada, and it turns out, Kleiman actually won his case. Sort of. From the news site:
Per the story, Kleiman turned down the offer because he didn’t want to sign an NDA. As the news outlet states, he was looking for $25 grand in damages, though there were other options. From Automotive News:
So after a decade of fighting — and seven years of fighting in the courts — Kleiman got at least…something. But it sounds like he lost out financially.
As a BMW i3 owner and engineer, my view on this is fairly simple: I think both parties are at least somewhat at fault, and I think BMW should probably shoulder a bit more of the blame than Kleiman. On Kleiman’s part, it’s up to the owner to understand the classic acronym: YMMV — your mileage my vary. The expectation that a car will get a certain range independent of a driving condition is unrealistic. If a car says it can do 124 miles of range in EcoPro+ mode, your next thought should be: But under what conditions (weather, speed, driving style, etc.)? But I’m sympathetic to the realization that a brand new EV owner — especially in 2014 — wouldn’t necessarily know just how large range fluctuations can be.
On BMW’s part, listing a range that’s clearly a stretch is probably not the move. In fact, I’d argue it’s foolish to list anything that isn’t the federally-listed range of your vehicle. Why open yourself up to potential litigation? State simply “This vehicle scores X miles of range on the EPA cycle.” And be done with it. To say “You can actually get up to 124 miles under certain circumstances” is just going to lead people to think they can get that range on their normal commute. Stick with the EPA/WLTP figures, label the ranges as such, and if you want to say “You can exceed these ranges if you drive carefully,” then fine. But definitely don’t throw out a range figure that isn’t based on — and clearly labeled as — a government certification. That’s I think where BMW went wrong here.
I understand why the company fought this — it would have set a bad precedent that could have led to lawsuits from any EV driver who didn’t achieve the advertised range. But man, just give the guy a 2017 i3 for goodness sake or just put in a newer battery. You replaced my battery free of charge!
This makes me think of my own C-Max Energi… it officially has 20 miles/32km of EV range.
However if I drive inefficiently at highway speeds of 120km/h or more, I’ll only get about 22km of EV range.
But if I drive efficiently on local roads with the HVAC turned off, I’ve gotten as good as 42km of range. And I think if I were to REALLY put effort into it, I probably could hit 50km of range if I drove at a steady 30km/h in optimal conditions, with the windows up and everything turned off.
If you drive gently in the way it’s done in the government fuel economy tests, you can definitely get the government-rated range.
Most people don’t drive that gently/efficiently.
It’s the same reason my most people don’t get the EPA ratings in their ICE vehicles.
So in my view, this guy is an idiot. I’m gonna bet if I was in the car with him and watched him drive, it would be his own inefficient driving habits that are the cause for him not being able to get the advertised range.
Also at the same time, I’m very sure I (or anyone else who knows how to drive efficiently using hypermiling techniques) could hit or beat the advertised range numbers.
There is hitting the EPA numbers and then there is outright lying. I bought one of the early C-Max’s (non-plug-in, couldn’t justify the upcharge) and it was advertised at 49/49/49. Did I expect that? No. But still, milage wasn’t great. About 6 months after the purchase I got a check from Ford for $500, saying Oh gee we’re sorry we overestimated the MPG. And then another 6 months later another $500 when they downgraded the MPG a second time. Not a bad car, not a great car, not buying another Ford in the forseeable future.
We had a C-Max Energi but picked it up when it was already several years old. We now have an Escape PHEV with an advertised range of 37 mi, Spring-early Fall the indicated range with a full charge is typically 42-45 because of the type of driving we do the most of. My wife did manage to get 43 mi out of it one time. Now in the winter it does much worse, in the low to mid 30’s.
He should be more upset about the horrendous deal he signed.
Agreed. $46K (maybe Canadian $), doesn’t own it after 4 years, and it misses the range by how much? And how many miles did he drive it? And how much did that “lost electricity” cost? And how much is he suing for?
I’d rather these types of people not get any media attention.
Maybe the car (and, heck, all cars) should have a “nanny control” for range? Sure, it will drive you literally as a grandma drives, but yeah, it will get you the advertised range that is oh-so-important.
well I think that’s good, it keeps people informed, it is also informing the uninformed the hard way, It loooks like the gist of YMMV meeans You Might Not Make it to the charger.
I don’t know the Canadian law system, but IMO it’s this kind of shit that emphasizes the need for much stricter enforcement of false advertising laws. Car makers (Inc Tesla) should have the asses utterly handed to them for the shit they pull, and awarding attorney fees to a side found at fault is honestly insane.
yah good luck with that in US, everything here has a fine print, even the attorney you contact to sue tesla has one 🙂
Oh, 100%, just something that we really should enforce more in the US. 0% chance we do. but still.
“YMMV — your mileage my vary. The expectation that a car will get a certain range independent of a driving condition is unrealistic. If a car says it can do 124 miles of range in EcoPro+ mode, your next thought should be: But under what conditions (weather, speed, driving style, etc.)?”
Off a cliff with a hurricane force downburst does not count though. The manufacturer claimed range has to be realistic, not some pie in the sky, black swan, blue moon, mega ultra jackpot six sigma outlier.
Confirmed… I took out an i3 at the top of a cliff just as a storm was coming in with my black swan sitting next to me in the passenger seat.
Not only did I make the EPA numbers, I BEAT THEM!!!
/jk
But seriously… to hit the EPA numbers, you simply have to drive as gently as is done in the EPA test.
The thing is, most people don’t have the patience to drive that slowly/gently.
But here’s another thing… many hypermilers are able to beat the EPA numbers often by a wide margin because they mastered the art of driving efficiently.
I personally have somewhat mastered some hypermiling techniques and am able to routinely beat EPA fuel economy numbers.
But seriously… to hit the EPA numbers, you simply have to drive as gently as is done in the EPA test.
Again the problem is the EPA test needs to be realistic or at least publish multiple values; hypermiling and leadfoot as they do with highway and city MPG.
That’s what WLTP is supposed to be, testing under realistic conditions.
Supposedly anyway.
For me, the issue with published ranges on a BEV is that, as a consumer, you’re led to believe that a car with a published 300 miles of range can get you 300 miles, or maybe 250 in bad conditions/aggressive driving. And range is an important consideration with a BEV.
With an ICE vehicle, the EPA mileage is meant to make it comparable to other vehicles tested on the same regimen – i.e. a rating of 30 mpg in one car should indicate that any given driver will see the same mileage in any car with a rating of 30 mpg and that they would see better fuel economy than they would in a car rated at 20 mpg. Range (usually) isn’t a factor because gas stations are ubiquitous and fueling is fast. When I see a EPA mileage rating, I don’t expect a particular range between fill-ups. In fact, I recognize that I need additional information to figure that out.
Maybe they should start advertising a fuel economy per kw, and as others have said many times, separate ratings for summer and winter.
This reminds me of Ford getting their arses handed to them around the same time when they overstated the MPGs of the then-new Fusion and C-Max Hybrids, which had the positive effect of them not inflating numbers.
Perhaps if the i3 was a bigger seller it would’ve been a bigger deal for BMW’s legal team.
That being said, it’s been my experience that very few consumers read all the fine print. They just see ‘this car gets 300 miles of range at 100% state of charge’ and assume it’ll stay that way until the end of time.
The Fusions were getting the numbers, and because the C-Max was about the same size and weight as a Fusion, they just let them use the same numbers. Turns our aero is important, and the C-max gets less than the Fusion by around 5 mpg. Nonetheless, I like my C-Max.
Ironically, if Ford was still selling the C-Max Hybrid/Plugin Hybrid, they’d probably be selling a lot more of those than Mach Es.
Well the new Escape is more or less the replacement for the C-Max, not sure on the total take rate of the hybrid and PHEVs though. Meanwhile the Bronco Sport is the new old style Escape.
Lately, there’s been a rash of people claiming that they were “told” something. For example, Trump said he was “told” that Biden wouldn’t drop out, and he was “told” that Harris was not black. Or something.
Many people use this as a kind of defense for some transgression- “Well, I WAS TOLD blah blah blah.”
But no one ever bothers to ask, “Was the ‘teller’ telling the truth? Did you vet the information? Or did you just accept it at face value?”
Personally, I don’t believe a damn thing I’m “told” until I verify it.
Or even more vaguely: “I heard…”
I was told that my friends roommate heard that it’s been said…
…on tv
“People on TV are saying” that Chrysler sell cars, but I did my own research and learned they only sell car, the Pacifica.
My depression over that is palpable, I learned to drive in a Cordoba.
“Your Mileage May Vary”
It was in all the advertising years ago – Don’t see why it’s not a thing anymore.
That’s pretty disappointing if the i3 cannot easily hit range numbers well above what it is rated at.
My ’17 Volt is EPA-rated at 53 miles and, unless it is winter, hitting 60+ is a piece of cake without even having to try.
I had a 2018 Volt and agree with you. It was the exception if I did not beat the 53 mile EPA electric range. 60 or more miles was easily achievable. GM definitely under promised and over delivered. Based on range tests I have seen, GM’s pure EVs are also much better than most other manufacturers when it comes to meeting the stated range.
The classic under-promise and over-deliver. If your Volt was rated to 80 miles you’d be singing a different tune.
But it doesn’t, so that point is irrelevant. That’s why you don’t do that.
Wow, a decade of your life? Much bigger fish to fry.. like the advertised effectiveness of my dishwasher’s rinsing agent. Talk about doing the Lord’s work here, wow.
Growing up with 22 minute toy commercials disguised as kids’ cartoons (divided by actual commercials for sugar bomb breakfast cereals and said toys), I learned early on that advertising claims are utter bullshit. This guy looks older than me (or the stress of this really aged him), so unless Canada didn’t have such adtoons, he should have known better.
And knowing is half the battle.
BMW could have given the guy $25 G and still made money or come close to breaking even, especially if they let him keep paying for the car. At $5G, BMW really got off light, though I’m not sure how guilty they really were as “Your mileage will always vary!”
To recap, this fellow was paying nearly $1,000 a month for a lease on a $41,000 car, which is thoroughly insane. Not only didn’t this fellow research EV range very well, he needed a lesson in finance. Even with Canadian to US conversion, it’s about $750 a month. Leases are supposed to be based on the price of the vehicle minus the residual (resale) price though advertised prices always seem to be more expensive than that. A thousand bucks a month should have been enough to buy the car in four, maybe five years, given a reasonable interest rate and a little haggling.
If he did a lot of research then he’s an idiot. Even back in 2014 it was general knowledge that EV range (and ICE mpg) were highly variable with many conditions. Nonetheless, BMW did knowingly misrepresent their product. In the US and with the right jury, this guy could have won 100k in punitive damages.
Well he really boned himself by not taking BMW’s offer to settle. YMMV
Range, MPG, it’s all bullshit.
He should have bought one with the range extender.
Realistically the energy demands for long distance travel at highway speeds are excessive for BEVs. It makes much more sense to have lightweight batteries in BEVs for in town usage, and ICE range extenders for long distance travel at highway speeds.
OMG. This made my brain hurt. $46k for the lease on a compact commuter.
was gonna say, WTF? you can drive a lot of nice shit for almost a grand a month.
Speaking as a Canadian, all Canadians are assholes. He was being a jerk, and wanted to be right more than he wanted a solution.
He got what he deserved.
Yay you won, now pay an extra $7K on top of your attorney fees and infinite costs in time. Butthead.
If he had an attorney, then at least a third of the 5K settlement goes to his attorney, then he has to pay BMW
“All Canadians are assholes”
Umm, speak for yourself?? There are assholes in every country, some have more than others, but please, I’m not like you.. (assuming you include yourself in your broad stroke…)
Naturally I’m included. If you search your heart, you know it’s true…
“Don’t wanna be a Canadian Idiot…”
On at least one website I write/edit for, I am strictly prohibited from using anything other than EPA mileage/range figures for exactly these reasons.
I have similar issues with my Livewire S2 Del Mar motorcycle. They advertise 113 miles of range, so I got it for my 35 miles commute each way. But I could only get about 60 out of it in gentle mixed city riding. Since no chargers exist on my route and I can’t charge it at work (long story), I had to get rid of it and go with another bike altogether (KTM 890 SMT). I can’t wait until battery tech gets better so we don’t have these issues.
All BMW had to do was add the two magic words: “up to”.
Then they would get sued by someone who was able to drive from Denver to Stratton Co on a single charge.
One of my German friends says that Germans take their cars to the dealer if the gas gauge goes to empty and the car doesn’t immediately stop running because the gauge is obviously broken.
Then use “up to or more”
Geez, I get 60mi on the guess-o-meter on my 2014 with a full charge. Actual range is more like 40, but I have well over a thousand cycles on my battery pack.
Maybe Canada uses the larger Imperial miles, just as they used to do for measuring gallons?
Problem solved.
Genius.
Thankyewthankyew. I’ll be here all week.
… determined in internal BMW consumption studies
What are the chances that BMW “tested” the i3 on a “rolling road” – a dyno that isn’t for measuring power, but distance.
That is the “perfect” driving condition. External temperature is controlled. No winds. No changes in elevation. No traffic. No A/C needing to be ran. And so on.
Completely deceptive, but also true.
This is actually how the EPA does testing for EVs, and ICE cars. However, the EPA has a lot of variables that are extremely well controlled, such as load on the vehicle that accounts for weight, aerodynamic loading, etc. They do this over a varying range of “test cycles” which are effectively exact ramps in speed to simulate driving conditions such as city, highway, and combination. These are all published and available to the manufacturers, and given the scale these automakers operate at, should have facilities to replicate them themselves. This should allow them to get close to the resulting EPA figures.
That all is of course now, not necessarily 10 years ago. My assumption is that this being a first gen EV and early on the adoption curve for BMW and the industry as a whole, some mistakes were made and lessons learned.
Edit: Check out the EPA website for some more specifics, it’s actually really interesting stuff that provides a lot of context as to how/why some cars miss or exceed EPA numbers. For ICE cars, some MFGs actually tailor their gear ratios specifically to the test, rather than real world driving, so they get a higher EPA rating than is realistic.
Agreed.
Thanks for the added EPA link. Some very interesting info….
They do this for both for a multitude of reasons. On the rolling roads the EPA uses, they actually account for aero loads in that the roads are dynamic and can vary the resistance provided to the vehicle. This is also why EPA ratings are listed clearly as “Estimated” given they don’t have the resources to validate every car on real roads.
The benefit here is it is a laboratory equivalent, such that every vehicle tested sees the exact same drive cycles, temperatures, humidity, cross/headwinds (none), fuel delivered/measured, and also how emissions can be measured in a repeatable way.
Fun (or maybe not) Fact – Because the tests for emissions and fuel economy are so tightly regulated and repeatable, this is how VW got away with Dieselgate. they programmed the car to recognize when it was going through EPA testing, because it is so exact, but normal driving outside of that resulted in better fuel economy and performance but much higher emissions.
The EPA has so much data it has aggregated that it has shockingly good models that are able to fairly accurately adjust out the unknowns to get very close to real world figures. For a long time Tesla actually had convinced the EPA to apply Tesla Specific fudge factors to boost rated range. This is why you’ll see early Model S/X owners, and even current model owners often stating real world range never meets EPA.
Didn’t Hyundai basically tune their cars to max out the EPA test as well?
Probably, the reality is every manufacturer will push their EPA ratings as high as possible, regardless of what it can do in the real world, simply because it sells. Especially true on a car that can maybe hit 275 in reality, but is rated at 305. 300 seems to be the magic number for a lot of people, where anything below that is unacceptable, even if in reality 280 isn’t far off, and every vehicle has variance anyways.
I don’t know of specifics on Hyundai/Kia EVs having tuning differences for EPA range, but it wouldn’t shock me in the slightest.
“they get a higher EPA rating than is realistic.”
EcoBoost Escapes
The gear ratios (or lack thereof compared to automatics with a lot of ratios or wide range CVTs) thing is one of the reasons I think manuals are hit in the EPA tests vs real world. I only buy manuals and always handily beat the mileage without trying. Usually my combined cycle is higher than the listed highway and I suspect the ratios aren’t optimized as well for their testing as there are too few ratios to afford optimizing without screwing up the driving experience (and maybe even real world mileage).
My understanding is that manuals are often not geared towards EPA testing, and oftentimes in highway testing, manuals are not even always in top gear, and city can be similar where being down a gear due to being 5mph off an optimal RPM for speed can really hamper a manuals EPA rating. A really great example of this is the C7 corvettes 7-speed. A friend has a C7 stingray with the manual and can get mid-30s on the highway, while the EPA rates it at 25 MPG. The “Highway” cycle on the 5-Cycle procedure does not go above 60mph, and is generally between 45-55mph, which is too low for the mega-overdrive 7th in a C7. Meanwhile at 70 MPH in 7th a C7 is at something absurd like 1100 rpm, basically idling down the highway.
EPA testing is close to as good as it can be, but as is always said, you mileage may (will) vary.
Some fault should be assigned to anyone who thinks spending 45 thousand dollars on a lease for a vehicle that was advertised to have a range of half that of even the lowest-ranged ICE vehicle on sale.
What I don’t understand is the source of 124mi. Was this the EPA or WLTP rating put up on BMWs website, or was this an in-house number BMW came up with? If the 124mi had a warning stating “*EPA Estimated Range* then quite frankly BMW is absolved. Sure, its a wildly not realistic range, but the laws are such that EPA range is what is to be advertised, at least in the US, and I would assume the same in Canada. If BMW pulled that number out of thin air and it was considerably higher than the EPA rating, then BMW is at fault.
I do think the owner should accept some blame for jumping on a first-generation EV right at launch. He is the definition of an early adopter and guinea pig for the manufacturer. Common sense was clearly not used when forecasting the long or even short term ramifications of jumping into the deep end like this without having taken swimming lessons first.
In that Wayback link you’ll see that it just says “determined in internal BMW consumption studies.”
Ahh yeah that makes a lot of sense. I would think if this was such an open and shut legal case (in the eyes of the owner), there would be at least a screenshot. I was going to edit my comment to add this but it locked me out.
The EPA rated the 2014 i3 at 81 miles of range but an efficiency of 124 MPGe. I’m actually curious if units got confused somewhere along the way. For reference, a gallon of Gas has 33.7 kWh of energy, the 2014 i3 has a 27 kWh total energy pack. The math says 22 kWh usable at 124 MPGe would get you 81 mi range.
Given some news sites (not here!) STILL mess up units of energy (“XYZ car has a 87 KW Pack, 280 kWh motor!” for example) a full decade on. I suspect sales people misspoke often, the EPA site was misinterpreted, and BMW was cheeky in their representations in marketing. Unfortunate all around, but this whole long saga seems well out of proportion.
A 2014 only has 18.8 usable out of a 22kWh pack. The 27.2 usable applies only to 2017+ models with the 33 kWh pack.
The 124 figure is just a coincidence; they’re using 200 km in the literature.