Day 5 – Switching cars and heading to Waterbury, Connecticut
After switching cars in the
morning, leaving the Nissan Leaf and picking up the blue BMW i3 Rex, we
prepared the trip to Connecticut, as there would be more than one car
travelling, the smaller i3 would be the cargo
van, so we filled it with three suitcases and other smaller bags.
After lunch, the battery was
again charged and it showed a scarcely believable 150 miles (240 kms) electric
range! I hadn’t really driven the car a lot, so I was really doubtful of these
numbers, but because the trip was only 105 miles (170 kms), I thought it could
be possible to reach Waterbury only in electric mode, if it wasn’t, there
wouldn’t be many miles running on gas, I thought.
And off we went, profiting from
the mild temperatures (16ºC / 60ºF) we left the A/C switched off and the first
miles confirmed the different character the BMW i3, it had heavier steering and
a sportier stance, it felt even smaller next to those 18 wheelers on the
Freeway and the iDrive multimedia system was starting to get on my nerves, as
the menus and button settings were less intuitive than the touchscreen system
of the Leaf.
But those thoughts soon passed as
we joined the New York congested traffic, where the handy-size, instant torque
and kart-like drive of the i3 helped to explore the small spaces left in the
compact traffic.
Soon after the George Washington
bridge, a silver Mercedes on our right side started honking at us, to our
surprise he was happily looking at the car and giving us thumbs up on it…
“Great Car!” – He said.
It was the first (But not the
last) time we saw the star-like attraction that the little i3 creates.
After a couple of scares (Was it
just me or are NY drivers nuts?) and a lot of stop and go traffic, the I95
finally was free of traffic and we reached cruise speed, where the i3 proved to
be quite stable and powerful, even at speeds that could have been well above
the legal limit…
Stopping midway for some
refreshments, a small kid with his parent pointed at the car and said: “Uau,
that thing looks like a toy car…Cool!!!”
Reaching close to our
destination, we made a wrong turn and we tried another big plus of the car, a
ridiculously small turning radius, basically we just turned the steering wheel
completely and…Voilá! We had switched to the other direction without any other
maneuver.
We arrived home and in fact the
car not only did the whole trip in electric mode, but after 105 miles, most of
it in highway speeds and some occasional A/C use towards the end of the trip,
it still had 22 miles to spare.
Days 6, 7, 8 – Running around
Connecticut
During these days visiting
friends and family, the BMW i3 was a big attraction, with plenty of reactions:
1.
What car is that? I never saw this BMW…It’s
electric? Really? I didn’t knew BMW made EV’s…
2.
Wow, this thing can go! Mom, you should get one
of these! (Father’s answer: “Yeah, but she likes to speed, with a thing like
this, she would get speeding tickets everyday”)
3.
Mmm…This is great as a commuter car.
4.
This BMW is electric? What is the range?
5.
Is there an electric minivan? (Answer: There’s
the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid, has 30 miles electric range on top of the gas
range). Nice…
The fact is that around Connecticut
I didn’t saw a lot of EV’s, besides the usual Teslas (Around two per day), I
only saw three Chevrolet Volt (One Gen 1 and two Gen 2), and…That’s it.
Where are all the Nissan Leaf? Do they only exist in California? –
I thought.
In this state the people mindset
regarding EV’s isn’t much different from New Jersey, they divide electric cars
in two categories, the first is Tesla, mentioning the brand coolness and the
Autopilot as more important than the fact that they are electric. All other
EV’s fall in a second category, where they are pictured as slow, low range and
expensive.
The good thing of the BMW i3 is
that is shatters two of the three previous preconceptions. Now the price it’s a
different story… People still correlate price with size, so the little i3
suffers in that regard.
Regarding infrastructure, I took
the opportunity to try a free 22 kW charger in New Haven, while I noticed that
CCS fast chargers had a better coverage (If not perfect) in CT than Chademo,
which is virtually nonexistent in the state.
On the last night, after having
dinner at some friends house, we arrived at the car and we saw three teens
staring at the BMW from close.
I switched on the car presence
lights and the kids gave a step back, looking at us:
-
Is it yours? It’s so cool!...
After making a small introduction
to the car, they were surprised by the fact that it was electric and by the
pick-up truck-like doors.
When I started the car and
started moving, one of them said:
-
Hey, it doesn’t make a sound! Awesome…
That night we had a couple with
us in the back seat and he was 1,9 meters (Six foot two), despite this, he was
surprisingly ok in the back, not only in height (Hey, I didn’t hit the floor!), but also on knee space.
The i3 doesn’t stop
surprising…Hell, even the iDrive system started to make sense!
Day 9 – Waterbury, CT to
Westerly, Rhode Island
One would think an 85 mile trip
would be an easy thing for the i3, right? And despite a cold (7ºC / 45ºF),
rainy night, that remembered the worst of winter in Lisbon, it actually was a fairly
easy thing to do with the Bimmer, despite being light and Rear Wheel Drive, it
didn’t had the smallest sign of aquaplaning, behaving on the highway like a
“grownup BMW” in these gruesome conditions.
Because the car wasn’t fully
charged and the A/C was permanently on, the last 10 miles were done using the
range extender, inside the car the only difference was a hum coming from the
back and a few vibrations, not much different from a regular gas car, but
noticeable in the previously serene i3 loft.
Day 10 – Westerly, RI to New
Bedford, Massachusetts
A 70 mile trip through some
really scenic back roads of Rhode Island, with a stop in posh Newport, which proved to be an EV friendly place, where I saw
my first Chevrolet Bolt, along with two Tesla and a Cadillac ELR (Beautiful
car, BTW).
After arriving to the car in
Newport, ready to resume the trip, the driver on my right said:
-
New Jersey nameplate? That is a looong way for
an electric car!
He got even more amazed when I
told him the final destination was Massachusetts…
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