The state of California forced BMW to replace the bad battery in the 134,000 mile BMW i3 I purchased for an absolute song. It was the cheapest i3 ReX in the country due to its mileage, but as I mentioned in my last article, the car is in very good shape inside and out. With a new battery, it’d be almost like I got a brand new BMW i3 for just $10,500 — the deal of the century. But not so fast: I first had to test the battery, which the dealership allegedly replaced in 10 days after initially telling me it’d take six to 10 weeks. I charged up my new little luxury economy car and drove it for the weekend; here’s what it was like to drive, and here’s how it went on a single charge of its “new” battery.
Upon receiving my BMW i3, the battery was completely depleted. The dealership had driven the thing to LA from San Diego, and had arrived on the gasoline range-extender (a little scooter engine under the rear floor that acts as a generator to power the electric motor after the battery dies); the end of that drive must have been rough given that the ReX can really only generate enough juice to propel the vehicle about 55 MPH, but then again, it may have been gridlock anyway. Anyway, the first thing I did when I got the keys was plug the little Bavarian carbon-fiber-wonder in and wait for the pack to fill up.
Of course, on my 100 yard drive to the charger, I couldn’t help but obsess over the car’s interior. “It feels special” I say in The Autopian’s YouTube video above (please subscribe!). There’s just something about the seating position, the beautiful wood dash, the incredible leather-and-wool seats, the white steering wheel, the big dashboard, and all the nice features like power-folding mirrors and heated seats and navigation — the interior is just a game changer. I consider it the i3’s trump card, and a huge part of what won me over in the first place.
The 7.7 kW charger I have at work took some time, but it didn’t take that long, as the i3’s battery is only about 22 kWh large (18.8 kW usable) — that’s a third to a quarter the size of a battery pack you’d find in a typical Tesla.
Some basic back-of-napkin math tells me that a full charge should take about four hours. Essentially, the 7-ish kW charger at my work really puts out about 6 kW. If it were able to operate at 6kW flat-out, a fill-up would take just over three hours (18.8 kWh/6kW = 3.1 hours), but that’s not typically how it works with charging — EV charging rates tend to taper off as the battery reaches its capacity (kind of like how you tend to pour more slowly once you’ve filled a cup close to its brim). Here’s a look at my i3’s typical charging curve:
So 18.8 kWh battery divided by 6kW charging is 3.1 hours; add in a bit to account for the tapering at the end of the curve, and four sounds about right. In my case, the i3 took about four hours and 15 minutes. Not terrible, especially if the car can do the 72 miles of range the EPA rated it at — that should handle three days of commuting for me:
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The vehicle estimated a range of 90 miles when it was fully charged! That’s absurd, as the EPA’s official EV range for the 2014 i3 with range extender is just 72 miles. Had the dealer actually replaced this battery in a mere 10 days?!
A reminder: When I initially test drove the car in early March, the car estimated a range of just 48 miles, so this seemed like a huge step up:
But there’s a reason why BMW i3 owners call the range estimate figure on the gauge cluster a “guess-o-meter,” so I wasn’t going to read too much into that 90-mile figure. I’d first have to start moving to let the vehicle learn my driving style and then adjust how far it thought I could travel on that single charge.
To start the i3, you press a button on the steering column just behind and to the right of the wheel (see above). Doing so activates a nice welcoming sound, and the gauge display begins to show miles traveled and estimated miles remaining on the battery, among other information. To shift into gear, you rotate a rocker forward for Drive and backwards for Neutral and Reverse. There are detents for each, so just push through the Neutral detent, and you can get into reverse without having to pull back twice — this is, in my opinion, one of the best vehicle shifters in existence, in large part because it takes up no usable space whatsoever and also because it’s highly intuitive.
By the time the car finished charging, it was dark out. I had loitered around the Galpin lot and eaten at Galpin’s Horseless Carriage restaurant (which is actually damn good), but eventually I got behind the wheel late on Friday, and it took only a few hundred feet for me to declare: The i3 is fantastic!
I genuinely believe the BMW i3 is the best deal in cars (okay, possibly tied with the base Ford Maverick, which costs in the low 20s, and gets amazing fuel economy while being legitimately cool). To be able to get an interior that gorgeous, to get all of those advanced features like adaptive Cruise Control and Park Assist, to get a complex hybrid powertrain with a 22 kWh battery pack, and above all to get a carbon fiber body on an aluminum skateboard — all for just $10,500? It’s absurd. It’s a lightly-used electric luxury car that’s built like a supercar, and all for just a low-five-figure price tag. It seems incredible in theory, and as a newly-minted owner, I can say that it is incredible in reality.
As I drove my i3 more, I fell more and more in love. It’s serene in the cabin, alleviating stress that I used to feel driving my old cars on LA’s wickedly busy surface streets and on its lane-discipline-devoid highways. “This thing drives like it’s brand new. Adaptive Cruise Control works great…I’m in love. I’m in love,” I say in the video while traveling 70 on the freeway. “I’m comfortable, I’m taking these highways in LA — I feel legitimately safe and comfortable, and I don’t have to pay $5.30 on gas.”
I will admit that the i3’s ride isn’t the smoothest, and the skinny tires tend to want to dart around a bit, so you’ve got to keep your hands on the wheel when traveling at freeway speeds. But still, I felt safe. The visibility is excellent, especially out of the front, and the seats are fantastic (though I haven’t road-tripped the car yet). I wish I had Blind Spot Monitoring, as the B-pillar just to the left of me requires me to look back to change lanes, but it’s really not a huge deal. The highway ride is good, and compared to that of any of my older cars, it’s more than good.
The following morning, I had to test something out. I never thought I’d own a car with bluetooth audio, much less one that can park itself, so I just had to know if that function worked.
I found some street parking, hit the Park Assist button, and slowly drove alongside the parked cars until I got a notification on the center screen that the car had detected a spot that it could fit in. I then stopped, activated my turn signal, held down the Park assist button, and let off the brake. Here’s what happened next:
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Holy crap! The car drove itself in reverse, the electric motor in the steering rack turned my steering wheel just so, and the car backed into the spot. I watched it all via the backup camera, which is a bit fuzzy due to some scratches on the lens, but still does the job just fine:
Once between the Mazda Miata and Toyota Camry, my 134,000 mile i3 actually shifted into drive (in an EV, this means the motor just spun the other direction), and the car inched forward, completing the perfect parking job. Look at how close the right wheels are to the curb!:
After my parking experiment, I headed off to Target to grab an air mattress from my college buddy Jeb and his lovely wife Giulia, who were slated to visit me the following weekend (they would join me on my hypermiling test in which we’d drive around LA as gingerly as possible to get as many miles out of my new i3’s battery pack as we could. Expect that video and article late next week!). Then I headed to my video producer Chris’ birthday party (Chris, shown in pink below, would also join me on the hypermiling trip, and actually become so frustrated with how long the i3’s battery would last that he ditched me — get ready for that story, because it’s good):
From Chris’ party, we headed to a bar, where I had a nonalcoholic watermelon-flavored drink in a place far fancier than I’m accustomed to hanging out. I stuck my pinky in the air whilst drinking — that’s what you’re supposed to do, right?
Anyway, peeking down at my guess-o-meter, I saw 65 miles of expected range after 30.1 miles traveled. Surely this car doesn’t think it can travel 95 miles — 23 miles higher than its EPA estimate — on a single charge, does it!?
The next morning, I headed to Ikea to snag some furniture, since I still haven’t quite moved into my one-bedroom apartment, and my clothes are all over the place. Here’s a look at how easily a new dresser fit into the i3:
From there, I hit the road northeast into the mountains to a place called Tujunga, where a reader named Steven and his wife Micah were awaiting me for dinner.
I threw the i3 around those twisty roads, though I kept the vehicle in Eco Pro + mode. This is the most efficient setting, which limits top speed to 56 mph, locks out features like air conditioning and heated seats, and dulls the pedal response.
On these nice roads, though, 56 was plenty, and the i3 — even with its skinny tires — felt nimble and fun.
I never touch the i3’s brakes — I mean that almost literally never. Letting off the accelerator pedal yields rapid deceleration, and there’s no way to change this. Regenerative braking is locked into “aggressive,” and if you combine that with adaptive cruise control that keeps you a set distance behind the car in front of you on the highway, the left pedal becomes more of an emergency-use-only thing.
The dinner with reader Steven was one I’ll never forget. It wasn’t just the incredible food that his wife Micah had cooked, it wasn’t just the beautiful setting in the hills just outside the city, and it wasn’t just our joy-ride in the i3 afterwards, it was the conversation.
Micah told me about her new cooking blog inspired by her Filipino upbringing, Steven told me about his time in the Marines and his love for cars, and then there was Jim, the World War II veteran. Jim sat next to me at the table, talked with me about his old cars (he had an old Chevy Camaro and a Ford F-truck, both of which he loved), and at age 101, he was sharp as a tack. He told me about his time flying planes, and about how long it took back then to get to Hawaii — much, much longer than it does today. He enjoyed the cookies I had brought from Ikea; I was glad about that.
It was a single dinner, but a memorable one with great people. I’m looking forward to the next one.
The following morning, as I commuted to work on the highway at about 70 mph, the guess-o-meter ran down to zero after a total of 86.2 miles traveled. I’d been driving carefully and rolling the windows down instead of using AC since it was cool out, but I wasn’t being that careful. I’d taken highways (which EVs hate — more on that in the next article), popped my drive-mode button from Eco Pro + to Eco Pro (which allows for speeds up to 75 MPH, heated seats, and HVAC functions) whenever necessary, and just generally gone the speed limit.
At about 86.5 miles, the gasoline engine under my rear cargo floor cut on and began acting as a generator to propel the vehicle (up to another 64 miles — see the gasoline guess-o-meter on the left), and thus the battery had died.
Eighty-Six and a half miles on a single charge — over 14 miles more than the i3’s EPA-certified battery-only range. This all but confirms that, despite not having fixed my broken front bumper clips, despite doing nothing about my rattly exhaust, despite making me buy my car before telling me about its battery health, and despite a few other confusing things about my purchase experience, my BMW dealer had indeed replaced my battery. And I had indeed scored the deal of the century.
Next week we’ll see exactly what this new battery has in it, as I take The Cheapest BMW i3 in America hypermiling to find out exactly how many miles I can go on a single charge if I’m very, very careful. My goal: 100.
Why I Bought My Currently-Broken BMW i3: LA Was Making Me Fall Out Of Love With My Old Cars
So where the hrll is part 1
It’s hilarious to listen to DT talking about having a semi-modern semi-nice car in reasonably good condition as though it’s some revolutionary quality of life discovery he’s just made. Who would have known that ancient rusty shitboxes don’t make the best and most relaxing DDs!
I’m glad he has finally discovered this. Keep the old cars, nothing wrong with that for fun purposes at all, but there are some things a newer nicer car is just better for. Having something reliable takes the pressure off the project cars too – you can enjoy the projects more because you’re not always in panic mode when you need to go somewhere.
So switch from endusone to applianceman. My DD i bought in 2002. It is better than these lookalike silver clones. Why do you even read here?
What are you trying to say?
Dave has been working incredibly hard, doing irrational things, to keep me highly entertained since he started inspiring all of us years ago.
My favorite thing about his old material was how crazy his ambitions were.
The best thing about his old adventures were how well they confirmed what a bad idea a project car would be for me at this point in my life.
This new modern Dave is doing the exact opposite. Now i want to go run out to my local used I3 store and buy one up right now.
And this makes me all happy for him but a little sad and depressed at the same time.
There’s something oddly wholesome about seeing David get so excited over modern automotive features that are new to him.
Like that Brandon Frazier movie where he was from the 50s and revived in the 70s.
Oh you MUST be referring to the classic cinema masterpiece Encino Man i think it’s Ice Age to late 80’s
I think it’s actually Blast From The Past, Brendan Fraser lives 35 years in a cold war fallout shelter and meets Alicia Silverstone.
This is all well and swell and I’m happy for you but does everybody get a battery replacement (in the Oprah Sense) as you did or outside of California are owners on their own?
No only Ca.
As I’ve bought a PHEV Pacifica this week, I was just investigating this. Most states (including mine!) have adopted California’s PZEV regulations, which requires Chrysler to honor the standard 100,000 mile hybrid system warranty out to 150,000. You get a battery! You get a battery! And you get a battery!
I cannot fathom waiting 4 hours to only be able to drive an hour.
I am also a bit surprised he is so enamored with Bluetooth stereo (available since before 2010 in many vehicles and self parking, that has been a feature on equally heinous ICE Escapes for some time, because it is stereotypically true that anyone willing to buy one of those is also a bad parallel parking person.
that’s just because you are comparing it to filling up with gas in an ICE car and they aren’t comparable at this point.
electric cars are probably never going to refill like that, but it’s hard to break away from thinking like that when it’s all we really are familiar with.
A EV owner of a car like this would typically charge overnight or even at their employer’s lot if using such as a commuter so the 4-hour time isn’t a concern. And they’re generally not looking to road trip such a car either so recharging in between 60-80 mile trips isn’t the focus of a vehicle such as the i3. As for Bluetooth, are you familiar with David’s past fleet? If you were you’d thoroughly understand his appreciation of it.
Man, if you think the i3 is good on a twisty LA-area mountain road, take a well-sorted BMW from the golden era out there, aka an E36/E34/E46/E39 and feel the era of when BMW truly was the “Ultimate Driving Machine.” Every time I rip my 92 525i on the Angeles Crest Highway or Glendora Mountain Road it feels like car guy heaven.
Can you set the range extender to charge up the battery while the car is parked or is it just for limping home with a dead battery?
Limping home. The idea behind it was that it would give you enough range to get home if you went past your commuting mileage.
I’m surprised at the window-rolling-down. I thought modern A/C was more efficient than rolling the windows down. Apparently there’s a speed threshold where that matters?
At highway speeds, absolutely.
Aero means less and less at lower speeds, although that point is lower in an EV, but AC drain is more constant at any speed.
According to the testing I remember the show Mythbusters did on this 45 mph was the magic threshold, i.e. …
if you’re going 45 or less, windows down is more efficient.
If you’re going faster than 45, windows up + a/c is more efficient
Of course I recall they did this testing with a regular ICE car, I’m sure there is some difference with a hybrid or electric car
Good to know, thank you.
If I recall correctly, this also lines up with what’s better for your hearing over long durations–the noise volume of air rushing in/past above about 40-45 mph can be bad for your ears over time. No more highway driving with the windows down for me.
I’d be curious what the difference in compressor efficiency is also, an ICE one being belt driven and an EV being driven by voltage, I’d bet the EV one consumes less power overall
I too bet that the electric compressor is more efficient than the belt driven since it can run at the optimum speed for the demand.
It definitely depends on the exact vehicle in question. Vehicles with extremely good aero are probably going to have a lower threshold, ditto for cars with highly efficient AC systems. So I’d bet that for EVs and Hybrids that number would be lower since most tend to have better than average aero and use electric A/C compressors that are able to operate at the most efficient rpm to meet the current demand, rather than letting the engine rpm dictate their operating speed.
1) BMW auto parking has two modes: a) 99.4% of the time “park flawlessly.” .6% “dive into opposing lane”.
2) Are LA’s roads really great despite the traffic? Because I borrowed a neighbor’s to test and that thing’s ride quality was absolutely unusable 8n DC, a shame as I was rooting for it so hard.
The traffic can be brutal, but the condition of the roads themselves is usually pretty good. The worst potholes are caused by water seeping into tiny cracks, freezing, expanding, and turning those tiny cracks into bigger ones — which isn’t much of an issue in Southern California.
I have an electric bike (Fuell Flluid-1S, dual battery) with more standard range. The BMW i3 has never inspired me. If I was going to do straight electric, I’d do a Tesla. My next vehicle however, is going to be an F150 hybrid. As soon as prices return from the post-COVID19 stratospheric levels we are still seeing, that is. There are so many more use cases for a PHEV truck than this thing.
It’s all about suitability for your use profile.
An F150 hybrid might be the perfect vehicle for you, but would be an expensive, inefficient, inconveniently large vehicle for me.
Agree 100% I would absolutely hate driving a full size pickup truck for anything other than when needing a full sized trucks’ capabilities. In fact I recently got rid of my Tundra in favor of a Touareg TDI because it’s so much more usable. I pretty much only used that Tundra as a tow vehicle for my track car and occasional runs to get mulch and what not. The Touareg does all that and more (with a little utility trailer) while get 2-3x the mpg (no joke) and is way more livable and usable.
That’s why my trucks have always been used basic trucks that only get driven if it is needed to handle the load, or when I need the 4×4. The only pickup I could see using as a daily driver would be the Maverick Hybrid, but I’d still need a full size to do 100% of the truck things I do.
It’s as if you never followed David nor are familiar with his past fleet…!!!
Because my wife is watching tv, I decided to watch the video with the sound off. That constant smile and happy surprised look at every step reflects what I think all enthusiasts feel when getting a new used car and checking out all the new to you. Congratulations.
I just want to say how happy I am for your good fortune!
I think you may have scored an even bigger deal than you think. Over the years, the i3 had two major battery upgrades. Based on even the estimated range you have, it looks a lot like they upgraded you to the next generation battery when they did the replacement. That’s an incredible deal if so!
This was my thinking too. Should check by draining it to ‘0%’ and charging up to full on a charger that meters the power. Charging is not 100% efficient, but on a slow AC charger it’s not bad and so if the power in is significantly more than the supposed pack size, then you might well be right.
I know a lot of people have been putting newer batteries in Nissan Leaves (Leafs?), not only because the early batteries were tiny to begin with, but also to upgrade them to have more capacity than they came out the factory with.
You’ll find yourself driving your other cars and trucks less and less. It’s just so convenient to take the ev to almost everywhere you need to go. And it’s fun to drive with it’s zippiness. I picked up a bolt in January and I’ve barely driven my 100 series LC since. I’m probably going to sell my LC since the wife drives a lightly built lx570 that can do most of what the LC can do and I feel bad just letting it sit in the driveway.
Yeah, after I got my little Zero I only ever rode a gas bike when I needed to go more than 12 miles away. After I got my big Zero with 100 miles of range, I just didn’t ride anything else.
I’m waiting to see more electric bikes around here. Where I live(Madison WI) there are tons of bike lanes and paths that go all over. See a ton of e bikes(and electric skate boards and those one wheeled things that look like snowboards) because they can utilize both of those and it makes commuting a breeze. See a fair amount of students still getting around on gas scooters as well but I bet that number gets smaller and smaller as more move to e bikes. I can’t see the advantage of a scooter over an ebike here at all other than they are probably cheap to pick up used.
Hey, the next time you go for dinner with this awesome sounding WWII vet, can I come?
An ex-girlfriend of mine was caretaker to an old family friend, also a WWII vet, who had lived an amazingly interesting life. He was a former B17 pilot, and after the war, he was a test pilot with Chuck Yeager and the boys. And I’m leaving out a LOT.
But here’s the most Autopian story he ever told: as a younger man before the war in his native Los Angeles, he had a job as a driver and general go-fer for a very wealthy family. In appreciation for his service, circa 1938 or so, they gave him a gift: A FREAKING DUESENBERG. He had driven it before while in their employ, but never above traffic speeds, so he immediately took it out to the desert to see what it could really do. He said he got it all the way up to 120 miles per hour, with plenty of throttle left to go, before he bailed out and let off the gas. In 1938. He drove right back to the house and handed them the keys back, and said “thanks but no thanks” – he knew he would kill himself if he kept that car.
This was a man who later would have 51 successful combat missions as a B17 bomber pilot, including one mission where his plane was so shot to hell, the fuselage broke in half when the wheels hit the tarmac. This was a man who flew bleeding-edge prototype jets in the 40s that were held together with chewing gum and baling wire. And after all that, he still said the only machine that he ever piloted that felt like more than he could handle was that Doozy.
Sorry for the nostalgic verbal diarrhea. Anyway, Tracy, congrats on the new to you car, and be sure to enjoy as many dinners with that gentleman as you can possibly have.
Thanks for this story!
You’re welcome. I left out the part about how his best drinking buddy back then was actor Noah Beery, and how the two of them used to shut down the Brown Derby every night with half of the stars of the golden age of Hollywood.
Shortly after WWII a friends dad was offered a Duesenberg for like $500.
Meh (at the time)
Are you kidding? Who would want that old piece of junk for that kind of money? I mean, that’s a third of the price of a brand new Nash Ambassador, for crying out loud.
Visibility is generally pretty good, but the base of the A pillar is pretty chunky and I’ve found it can cause entire vehicles to be lost on certain angle junctions just long enough for you to think the road is clear.
Unfortunately, this seems to be an issue with far too may cars. I’ve lost Semis in my A-pillar, and my passengers helped me avoid two other accidents. And I drive a Fit.
*Too many NEW cars*
I’ve found that lots of “safety” measures inherently make vehicles less safe like massive A pillars slanted at almost the perfect angle to maximize the size of the blindspot they create.
You can work around a blind spot a lot easier than you can heal your crushed skull from a rollover
Driving up to tujunga on an unknown battery takes guts. Glad you made it there and back!
Just as a reminder for a new EV owner, do not top the battery off to 100% everyday if you want to keep it healthy.
Since it’s well known that lithium batteries last longer if they aren’t charged to 100%, why don’t all the smart devices they’re used in automatically cut off charging at, say, 80%? Lie to us a little, for our own good and for the sake of the battery, and tell us it’s full.
Phones do. Not sure about EVs, range numbers might be considered more important.
(They do.)
There is a buffer – for example, my Polestar has a 69kWh pack with 64kWh useable, so even when ‘100%’ or ‘0%’, it’s not. Day-to-day, they recommend charging to 90%. Some manufacturers say 80%. The car has a slider to change the charging percentage, and will shut off when it reaches that level.
But it’s useful being able to use that extra 10% on road trips. When I go down to my parents, for example, I’ll charge to 100% before I leave. But on my return, I move the slider back to the recommended 90%.
This isn’t what I’ve heard from i3 owners. They say to stick to the “ABC rule” (Always Be Charging) and that the car is designed for it
This isn’t an issue with the i3. BMW made the interesting choice of not even allowing you to charge it to 100%. The range and battery meter will say it is 100% but it is actually closer to 80% (I could be wrong on that last amount). It is a little annoying know that Teslas could allow you to charge to 100% before a long trip and the i3 doesn’t but it probably kept BMW safer from people demanding warranty repairs on their batteries.
David definitely has that EV grin.
I think 120 miles range is doable at a steady 45 mph on a long, straight rural road with minimal stops. But it’s probably not practical to do that in California. 100 miles is certainly doable though.
I’d sure like to experiment with the ideas of using the windows down vice using the A/C. So much drag to be countered with additional battery energy.
In most cases, windows down would be less demanding of energy than AC below about 30 mph. Above that speed, AC will use less energy. This is a generalization, as there are a lot of variables to consider.
Like a Swedish lounge.
I have no experiential understanding of what this means but I’m going to use it to describe everywhere I go from now on.
What a perfect date car. Congrats David, and good luck with the ladies. Remember, wait until date 2 before you reveal who you really are. People like us need all the help we can get. 😛
Loving this!
I’m loving this series. I’m sure a bunch of people have mentioned this already, but the EU “code” for the REX is simply a must.
Two things to explain:
In BMW parlance, “coding” and “tuning” are two very different things. Typically with BMWs you can “code” certain features that enable, disable, or change the behavior of various car functions. For example, enabling the rear fog lights on my 2008 3 series that was originally driven around Germany by an air force member, and thus required to have rear fog lights to pass TUV. As such, coding options do not alter the actual engine running parameters in the DME (ECU).
Why does this matter?
California.
The i3, in order to quality for some sort of goofy tax break when it was sold, could not be sold with an ICE range that extended farther than the EV range, and the speed in ICE mode was also limited. Outside of the US, the I3 REX does not have these limitations and is a proper range-extended EV, and is FAR more practical as a result.
This change can be made extremely easily and cheaply with a cable you can buy off Amazon and free software. I definitely suggest looking into it; I drove a REX with this change made and it was instantly elevated beyond “useful for getting around town” to “oh, I could road trip this anywhere”.
I’ve read many stories of this change. I don’t live in CA, so I don’t know if DT would get dinged at inspection time.
I live in FL – what inspection?
There are no inspections in CA.
Instead of the more electron-hungry HVAC heater, the seat heaters are the better thing to use to keep occupants warm whenever possible in an EV — not that you’ll need much heating in SoCal now that Spring has sprung.
(BTW, your drive to Tujunga looks to be along La Tuna Canyon. If you drive that route regularly, you’re sure to see Jay Leno tooling around in some fascinating car for his show.)
Tuna Canyon looks like a wonderful road for taking a Mazda Miata, Lotus Elise, or Alfa Romeo 4C on with the pedal to the floor.
La Tuna Canyon isn’t the one for that kind of thing; it’s clogged with slow cars and a big chunk of it is residential.
The roads you would do that in are Big Tujunga Canyon Road and Little Tujunga Canyon Road. Those are even better than Angeles Crest. I used to take my Miata through there with the pedal to the floor a lot.
I keep seeing this claim about seat heaters, and I agree, but with a caveat – it depends on the climate and/or dew point. In my area, if it’s cool enough to stick with just the seat heaters, then it’s probably humid enough to need the defogger as well. I can stay warm efficiently, or I can see where I’m going, but not both. We are a 3 EV family and this is true for all 3. I’d love to see the rear defrost wires in a front windshield someday just to see if it would actually work well.
VW of all companies actually had the defrost wires for like 2-3 rows on the bottom of the front windshield of the Eurovan. This was to help prevent / make it easier to unstuck the front windshield wipers in cold/snowy/ice weather
I’m sure other automakers have done this for other cars, that’s the only one that is coming to mind
My Subarus have all had wiper de-icers.
Fords used to have it very commonly, at least in the European market. I had a 2007 Focus with it. Branded it as the ‘Quickclear’ windscreen, and it worked very well. The only good thing about that car, to be honest.
Those Ford systems had little wavy lines embedded into the glass, which made them costly to replace and also I found it quite annoying at night, particularly in the rain.
Some more modern system are available which use a conductive layer in the glass which eliminates the optical irritations. I know VW offered it on the Golf Mk.7, as a friend optioned it in his GTI.
I had an 88 Taurus wagon with the heated windshield. It was amazing, until it cracked. Replacements are unobtanium (this was around 2010). Had to put a “regular” windshield in it.
It’s great to see the joy on your face. One benefit of having a nice and reliable car is that it will not reduce the enjoyment of your other cars, in fact it will increase it. Because you have eliminated a worry item you can enjoy your other rides all the more. You will now be able to appreciate the rugged truckiness of the J10, the more mechanical feel and connection of the Mustang, the quirkiness and time machine feel of the Metropolitan, and you can wrench on the holy grail ZJ without worrying about a deadline to get it running.
Also as you fix up the little things on this car you’ll learn a different aspect of wrenching. With your other vehicles you had to worry about just keeping the darn thing on the road and now you’ll learn about fixing and perhaps doing mods on smaller items to make the car better and nicer and keeping it in tip-top shape. No, it’s not the same as major wrenching jobs but it’s more relaxing and pretty enjoyable in itself.
I’m generally not a huge BMW fan but the i3 seems pretty cool and it allows you to have a nice, reliable car while being significantly more than just a soulless transportation appliance. Congrats and I hope you have many years of pleasure with it.
Same here, I’m not big on BMWs, but I dig this car. In retrospect it seems like lightning in a bottle. And my wife absolutely loves them; she got to ride in her boss’s i3 years ago, and she still points them out today whenever she sees one.
This…! Because we have our road “cruiser” in our super-smooth, reliable (yes, for us!) Jetta TDi Sportwagen for road trips and essential town trips, I can fully enjoy the creakiness and crankiness of my “mid-80’s” HJ-60 Land Cruiser for what it is… a growly, unstoppable, but lumbering beast, complete with french-fry smell from the biodiesel. Enjoy both of your worlds, David!
Well said