BMW i3 REx Declared Winner in the Road Trip Marketplace

BMW i3 Loaded to the Max for Road Trip Duties

What is the perfect road trip vehicle?

As a teenager and young man, I formulated my vision of the ideal road trip vehicle based upon my fantasy desires of high-performance exotics. Reading about Brock Yates' and Dan Gurney's record-setting race from coast to coast in a Ferrari Daytona, with Gurney famously quoted, "at no time did we exceed 175mph," left me with an early impression that a proper road trip was best done in a vehicle wholly capable of destroying as much pavement per hour of travel as imaginable.

I maintained the Cannonball Run road trip ethos until I got married. My views of pleasurable travel were not forcibly changed by the fact that my wife was an attorney, and that I would be looking at a post-nuptial agreement faster than I could've said, "Isn't a hundred miles per hour fun?!?" No. My opinion of the perfect road trip vehicle changed because I found somebody that I wanted to enjoy the traveling with! For the first time in my life, I wanted more from road tripping than just notching the broken speed laws on my belt.

With a new bride, I bought the perfect road trip vehicle: a Nissan Xterra. The Xterra was fantastic, and lived up to its marketing mantra, "everything you need, nothing you don't." We traveled to Yellowstone, and across America.

Yet, the Xterra wasn't perfect. It consumed gas. So much gas, actually, that we had to make tough concessions on our trips:

Wife: "Crater Lake is beautiful! Do you want to do the Rim Drive?"
Me: "No way. That is like ten bucks in gas!"

And so it went with the Xterra. There were amazing trips, but sights unseen.

Years passed. The Xterra was long gone, and the road trip gas budget was replaced by the expenses of having two kids. We bought two all-electric Nissan LEAFs, which served our daily needs wonderfully. In the Pacific Northwest, we were able to travel easily along the I-5 corridor in Washington and Oregon to see family and have fun day-excursions. What was missing, though, were those family road trips that my wife and I, as newlyweds, pinky promised to do once we had kids.

Team "Crazy Daddy" getting ready to depart on the BC2BC EVenture!

In 2013, I decided to give the LEAF a shot at road tripping. I convinced my wife to let me take our then 5-year-old daughter on a 17-day road trip from Canada to Mexico. It was a 3,500 mile trip of mostly pain and little pleasure. First generation Nissan LEAFs were just not ready for West Coast road trip duties: too little charging infrastructure in California and Nissan's lack of active battery thermal management were two primary limitations.

What the Corams needed for our family road trips was a perfectly compromised vehicle. A balance between a gas guzzling, no-fun SUV like a Nissan Armada, and an ultra-eco canyon carver Tesla Roadster.

Fortunately for us, BMW seemingly took these two vehicles and morphed them into an experimental Venn diagram, and came up with the i3 REx as the overlapping output:

BMW i3 REx = Best Road Trip Vehicle?

So, what is a road trip in an i3 REx like? We traveled from north of Seattle, Washington to Anaheim, California, and back, in 14 days with two nights in each Morro Bay and Calistoga, California, and three nights' stay in Disneyland.

That sounds like a typical gas-powered road trip, with many sights seen and several overnight stops. Conversely, the similar trip in our LEAF two years ago resulted in very little sight seeing. Basically, my daughter and I had just the time it took to charge the car to get in our "touristy" moments.

For the 3,000 mile trip in our i3, which included a colossal 580-mile "RExing It" travel day, we averaged an impressive 69 mpg-e. "MPG equivalent" is quoted because the BMW i3 REx is not a typical plug-in hybrid vehicle. Instead of a Prius-like hybrid all-the-time 50 mpg, the i3 REx is an EV until the battery is drained, then operates as a series hybrid, with a two-cylinder gas-powered generator charging the battery pack.

While the i3 REx is the best road trip car imaginable on the market today, it is not without its deficiencies. Obviously, it is a small car. Instead of packing a trunk full of clothes, we did laundry six times on the trip to allow for us to pack light.

Another limitation is BMW's use of the Combined Charging Standard (CCS) on the i3. For a trip like ours, we should have used a fraction of the 43 gallons of gas it took because there is not a mature CCS infrastructure up and down the West Coast. BMW, please support CCS infrastructure deployment and/or provide i3 owners with a CHAdeMO adapter solution! Having a CCS quick charge plug on an i3 in the Pacific Northwest is as useful as the male nipple.

The EV landscape is quickly changing. In just a few short years, there will be many capable road trip plug-ins on the market. Some will be all-electric, and some will be larger than the i3. For now, though, the i3 REx reigns as the road trip king, providing enjoyable driving dynamics with long-range capabilities for its patrons.

There were many more pictures taken of the trip! For more i3 photography of this EV Road Trip, click here.

BMW i3 Road Trip: In Pictures

Driving Bliss on the Mulholland Highway!

@ Sterling Vineyards

@ Casa di Amorosa

The Redwoods, Baby!

Our Airbnb Overnight Charging Solution

Carson Mansion: Eureka, CA

Emergency charge when we ran out of gas, and the pumps were closed, in Lakehead-Lakeshore, CA

Madonna Inn, San Luis Obispo

Classic EV road trip lunch!

Morro Bay, CA

The Mother Ship

EV Purist No More--Enter the REx!

This EV is unlike the others!

Hi! My name is Steve, and I was born electric on August 15, 2012.

You highly intelligent, super savvy readers may be questioning my sanity. Or, at the very least, fact-checking. And those dubious thoughts are spot on. The above picture is me putting gas into a new kind of EV: a BMW i3. And those understanding of the i3 know that, in 2012, the i3 only existed as an internal tension at BMW between the maniacal engineers that thought a mass-market car could be made extensively with carbon fiber and the bean counters that believed BMW i was a financial money pit destined to ruin Team Bavaria. Eureka!

EV Bloodline

Our first three EVs were all-electric Nissan LEAFs. 

Back in the summer of 2012, we started replacing our gasoline-fueled family hauler fleet. The second LEAF came eight months later, making us an all-EV household. My wife and I defiantly and definitively proclaimed that we would never again visit a gas station. Then in 2014, I traded my beta test 2012 LEAF for a ready-for-market 2014 LEAF.  We were seemingly set with two very capable EVs in our garage: a 2013 Nissan LEAF SL and a 2014 Nissan LEAF SL. 

Then the electric vehicle market expanded +1 in Washington state. BMW started selling its i3 in the State the latter half of 2014. By Christmas, I had one on an extended test drive. When we turned the i3 back over to the BMW dealership, we were conflicted. The i3, with its onboard gas generator, or Range Extender (REx), was far more capable as a transporting vehicle. However, Nissan's LEAF, with its CHAdeMo-equipped quick charging, was far more capable as an EV. 

Fallen LEAF

Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic (CFRP) Passenger Cell

Unless you are a bot scouring the Interwebs, you have correctly surmised that we ended up buying an i3. On March 12, 2015, we traded in my wife's 2013 LEAF for a BMW. The i3 is unlike any vehicle on the road: carbon fiber, suicide rear doors, and series-hybrid purity.

The features and headlines that make the i3 such an emotionally appealing vehicle are all present in our bimmer. Yes, there are plenty of bits to get excited about with the car. However, the deciding factor in selling a LEAF for the i3 was the REx option. 

For the past three years, we have traveled far, but not wide, in a LEAF. We have shown that all-electric travel is quite possible the 1,500 miles between Kamloops, British Columbia and the U.S.-Mexico border. But EV travel (sans Tesla EVs) is only practically doable in a narrow 200 mile east-west corridor along the entirety of the West Coast.

Road Trip! A Coram Family tradition.

My wife and I have a long history of road trips...long before we had EVs, long before we had kids. Now that we have EVs and kids, we have naturally invoked our parental obligations of perpetuating traditions with our Littles. And, we've all but exhausted the territory that we can travel to by LEAF. From here on out, the i3 will be taking over as the primary road trip car. With that in mind, I wanted to prepare a day trip for the i3 that would serve as a suitable first, of many, REx adventures.

One of the great tests for EVs lies in day-tripping to the Olympic Peninsula from the Seattle area. I've done this trip twice with my children. The first attempt, ended in failure. The second a success, as we made it to Hurricane Ridge, a spectacular mountain region south of Port Angeles. What makes EV day travels to the Olympic Peninsula challenging is that the last ferry on the Kingston-Edmonds route departs at 11:00pm. In addition, there is not DC quick charging support, and only a limited number of Level 2 charging stations in the region. Basically, the furthest west a current generation LEAF can go in a day, from where we live in Lake Stevens, is Port Angeles.

The i3 REx faired much better. This is our report...

Topping off the 1.9 gallon gas tank! 

We pulled out of the garage at about 7:00am, and made the ferry crossing and drive to Port Angeles by mid-morning. And after charging at a Sun Country-branded Clipper Creek High-Amp Level 2 (HAL2) charging station for a bit over an hour, we topped off the gas tank and continued west: Destination Cape Flattery 70+ miles away.

We made it to Neah Bay after about two hours of driving; WA-112 is not an interstate. The typical travel speed was about 45mph, and we had to watch out for the occasional herd of elk!

A herd of a few dozen elk crossed the road we were driving on!

The Makah Tribe, in the Neah Bay region, have started supporting electric vehicle tourism with several recent EVSE installations. The first, a HAL2 and dual Tesla High-Power Wall Chargers (HPWCs) are located in the town of Neah Bay. The second, another HAL2 and dual HPWCs are located at the Hobuck Beach Resort.

Both locations are glorious, in scenery and in EVSE support. In between these two gems, is a marvel in its own right: Cape Flattery. The Cape Flattery experience is second to none. It provides quintessential Pacific Northwest ocean views and kid-friendly hiking abound.

So, after trekking around Cape Flattery in the early afternoon, we let the kids play on the mile-wide Hobuck Beach, which has sand more reminiscent of a Hawaiian coastline than the typical pebbled Northwest affair.

Hobuck Beach: End of the road

By late afternoon, we were heading back east, towards Port Angeles, the Kingston-Edmonds ferry, and eventually home. Pulling into the garage at just past midnight, we were all exhausted, with both kids soundly asleep in the back of the i3. What was different about this trip: We covered 340 miles in a day (using less than 5 gallons of gasoline), and the kids were dead-tired because we had so much adventure outside of traveling in the car.

Tuckered out after a day of fun.

Road trips will forever be different for us, now that we have an i3 with REx. Whereas before, with a LEAF, every moment of the trip was in service of charging. The motto, "if it ain't movin', it better be chargin', " was not coined by somebody driving a hybrid, or Tesla for that matter.

With the i3, we will be able to drive all-electric, all the time. Or, if we wish, we can utilize the REx to take us where no Coram has gone before. Now, that sounds like an EVenture!

We love our new i3!

Handyman Husband Soul Searching After EVs Take Over Garage

           Before EVs                                                                                       After EVs           

Buyer beware! Electric vehicle ownership will render your tool collection useless. For most, this is a wonderful perk in replacing unreliable, gas-powered vehicles with EVs. For me, I was left with an identity crisis.

Two self-proclaimed attributes that I proudly embrace are: 1) I am a creature of habit, and 2) I take pride in reparing things (often having to fix the various machines that I, myself, break). When these characteristics are simultaneously present, happiness and life-purpose become aligned in symmetry and beauty.

Take, for example, the years in which we owned our 1992 Saturn SC. That car suffered from a perpetual cycle of being broken. What good fortune! Every weekend, I was tasked with fixing the Saturn so that my wife and I could make it to school and work the following week. If there was ever a miraculous span of a few days in which the car didn't break down, I would end up perusing the local Sears hardware store and buy a new tool to preemptively practice an unforeseen car repair. Then, for the rest of the weekend, I would be in the garage 40 straight hours fixing, say, the platinum-tipped spark plugs that I cross-threaded into the engine's cylinder head.

Then, along came these pesky electric vehicles. At first, it was such a hopeful time in my life. I saw wonderful potential in needing new tools, and, surely, long weekends in the garage awaited and would require a new skillset to repair the mysterious EV Drivetrain.

It didn't happen, though. My tools went unused. My garage went from a repair shop to a storage place. My weekends were filled with family time, instead of lovingly cursing at our cruddy cars that kept breaking.

Blast that dangling EVSE!

After going all in, and purchasing our second Nissan LEAF, I set up our upgraded portable EVSE on one side of the garage for fill-up duties. The resulting installation solution was one that perpetually drove me nuts, though. In haste, I had mounted a couple of wall hooks that had previously collected dust as idle bike hangers. While maintaining portability of the EVSE for road trips, the hooks did not sufficiently support the EV plug handle during garage duty; every night, upon returning home from work, I would see that the weight of the handle caused it to drop nearly to the garage floor during the day. It was sloppy. I needed a solution!

The anticipation of doing a car-related project in my garage was nearly unbearable. I, however, wanted to take time to research solutions. It was critically important to get this right, as it was possibly going to be my only chance of using mechanic's tools the entire upcoming year.

After many a long nights standing in our cold garage, starring at the wall and visualizing an ideal solution, I took to the Interwebs to find a company that manufactured what I needed. While reading about, and comparing, numerous EVSE wall hangers, I honed in on the few best products available for EVSE cord management.

Injection Molded EVSE Holster & Cord Management

The winning product was an elegantly designed EV plug holster, with an incorporated cord management solution. Small. Simple. Superior. After all, Occam's razor reminds us that the simplest solution is the one that ought be selected. At $25, the EVSE holster manufactured by "erroneus," and sold on MyEVBlog, was seemingly expensive for a piece of plastic. However, exceptional quality and design were deciding factors that made this a no-brainer.

The week following the online purchase, I anxiously checked the front porch every day for the incoming delivery. After three or four days, I sensed that my wife was onto me. I eluded her inquires until the package arrived. After describing the pending car/garage project, she quizzed me with a few poignant questions. Clearly, I was stressing her out. She was likely not wanting a perfectly working car--or charging station--to be broken by my handy hands.

New EVSE cord management.

Installation of the EVSE cord management solution was frustratingly easy. Just the included four, strategically placed, stainless steel screws were needed to provide a rock-solid wall mounting of the holster. To appease my handyman aspirations, I stayed in the garage an extra thirty minutes to fool myself into believing that a large-scale project had been accomplished.

I understand that this is the 21st century. As such, I am reluctantly succumbing to the notion that the age of gas-powered cars is ending. Those thermally inefficient money pits that gave me purpose in the days of yesteryear will soon be destined for memories of nostalgia. I hereby surrender myself to future.