Hi all,
two month ago, i received my company car. I chose an i5, as i wanted an EV, need some space, and hate SUVs. I could fit nearly everything optional in the car (besides the air suspension), keep that in mind. Also it is “only” the M40, the rear drive only variant).
As i am from Germany, so no freedom units. Sorry to you over there on the other side of the pond.
I am living in the countryside, and we (my gf also drives the car) have to drive daily, either shopping, she to work, or i travel long distances across Germany.
My first impression on takeover of the car: This is a monster. Not only looks it mean as hell, it is wide and long. Dude. I instantly was glad about parking and lane assistance. I knew the dimensions before hand, but 2m width and over 5 meter of length are much bigger than i had in my mind. This is my only big issue with the car btw. I have a growing blacklist of parking garages and underground parking lots i am not comfortable to drive in.
That out of the way, the car is great. Interior, quality of life features, all well designed. I will only get into a few here, as this will be (mainly) focused on the EV aspect of the car.
Efficency
After using the car for a while, i was surprised by the efficiency of the car. Our regular trips into the neighboring towns, shopping, visting friends, are coming out with around 20KW/km. Autobahn tours with free flowing traffic and a target speed of 130km/h are between 17KW/km and 19KW/km.
With the 82KWh battery pack, ~330km distance in our mixed usage and 80%-10% SoC, are typical.
Charging
Charging was promoted with 205KW and that checks out. I even seen charging rates of 210KW, reported by the car. The maximum charge rate is reached usually between 15% and 55%. On most stations, i can forget to even reach 180KW, but that is more on the state of german charging infrastructure, then on the car.
Using the charge planning feature of the satnav is just a great experience. It keeps stops at a bearable amount of time and recommends target SoC with enough reserve to accounts for possible detours or other delays. Charging stations can be filtert by network, for all those network members. I didn’t test this feature, as an all-network charging card is part of the car in my company.
If a charging stop takes longer, on board entertainment is great. Multiplayer games, TV streaming, or offline media, it does not get boring. I have the Bower&Wilkins system and ConnectedDrive. ConnectedDrive is required for the games and streaming features. The HiFi system just transforms your lokal slow charger to a mobile cinema.
Heated and vented seats
Vented and heated seats are great. For range! Instead of heating and cooling the space in the car, roughly equivalent to the space in a German student apartment, using those comfort features and lowering AC gives you a few hundreds Wh. I tested this on some very hot days. I was alone on the car, and set the temperatures to a comfortable value. Without seat venting, this was around 22°C, with seat vending, went up to 25°. This saved ~300Wh/km. I did multiple runs, and the that seemed pretty stable. I will report back after some real cold days, and lets see how the values look.
I have vented and heated seats in the front and heated seats in the back. Both features are optional.
Space
This is the only non-electric feature i will talk about, but if you got this far, you are most likely interested in it.
And the space is amazing, on all levels.
Driver and passenger seat have leg room, you can fit 3 crates of german beer in the room on the passenger side.
The back seats also have enough space. A 2,03 meter friend sits comfortable there, with enough head and leg space.
And then for the trunk. I moved a single household of a friend in 3 tours. Bed, kitchen appliances and his office. The backrest has 3 parts. It took me a while to recognize this. You can lay it flat, and it looks like two pieces, but the center piece as a separate latch. So if you fit in something long (like some cable conduits), you are covered.
Conclusion
I like this car. While it does clearly have not the longest range or the fastes charge reads on the market, i don’t find this limiting. Never was i annoyed by a charge break (only by broken chargers…), and on long distances, charging breaks are refreshing.
The 340PS are fun, and sometimes, just pedal to the metal, is just amazing.
And all the comfort features, from vented seats over the gesture media control to the onboard AI voice assistant, are well thought out and implemented.
Hands free driving on the Autobahn is a nice idea, for those who like it, i don’t. I use the full steering assistant, but i am not comfortable taking my hands of that round thing in front of me.
Lane Change assist and parking features keep this monster manageable in rush hour traffic on the Autobahn and squeezing into tight parking spots.
But: There is a price. Literally. The car as it is standing in my driveway, comes in with 94k€. I am in the privileged position to get this car as part of my salary. If you can afford this amount of money, and are looking for an EV, give it a look. You get a solid BMW station wagon that drives like an BMW station wagon. It just is fun to drive it. And you get a lot of space. More then in most SUVs out there.
If you have questions, AMA
Are you able to charge at home? What are the costs to charge, especially at home vs at a public charger?
I guess there’s no real point to charging at home when your employer pays for it to be charged at a public charger, other than convenience.
Last year I was in a rental Chevy Bolt EUV for about 6 weeks that Kia paid for while replacing the engine in my wife’s Soul. I was really impressed with how inexpensive charging at home made it compared to paying for gasoline, but DC fast charging was actually more expensive than gasoline when looking at cost per mile.
In theory yes. We are lacking the wallbox for now. We moved just a few month back, and while there is a solution to get the energy paid if I charge at home, I would have to buy a wallbox for way to much money from the payment provider we use for charging. There I would pay around 5k€ for a 22kW wallbox. And this box can not be used for other cars.
But: My gf ordered her Cubra Born some weeks back. And a wallbox for ~1000 with it.
I can see the prices my employer pays for my charging. On the most expensive chargers, the costs would be roughly the same as for a Diesel. On some reasonable priced chargers it gets way cheaper.
But keep in mind that we have extremely high gas prices compared to the US. We tax our diesel and gasoline with a “steering tax”, as the lawmakers want citizens to save on gas, and reduce CO2 emissions.
If I would charge at home, we could get a second contract with our electricity company, with about half the usual price per kWh for charging only.
Would the box not be allowed to be used on other vehicles, or not be able to be used on other vehicles due to the coupling?
You have to unlock the box with the company charging card. And all charging costs are paid by the employer. So only the company car is allowed. The whole behavior of the payment partner is just bullshit at this point.