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.