Back in their heyday, the Top Gear boys were always taking perfectly good cars and kicking them out of their comfort zones. Down the years, Clarkson and the gang have raced a Bugatti Veyron against a fighter jet, steered a Toyota pick-up down a flight of stairs and let Tom Cruise drive the bejaypers out of their “reasonably priced car”.
So when BMW gave me its prized electric-powered i3 to test, I felt I owed it to motoring to push it beyond battery-friendly city limits.
You see, if you’re going to drive an electric vehicle (EV) any sort of distance, you need to think about the ready availability of a socket. But this new version of the i3, the 94Ah Rex, has a petrol-powered range extender that kicks in when the battery dies, which means you can drive it for an extra 80-odd kilometres between sockets — or so the BMW blurb told me. As the owner of an iPhone with long-broken battery promises, I have grown wearily accustomed to having to think about sockets every time I leave the house.
That estimated 300km-330km range is about 65% more than that of its leccy-only predecessor, making it the most economical EV of its size and class. Those sorts of numbers, among other things, are what helped win it the 2017 World Urban Car award. It’s touted as the ideal city ride; the future of urban transport, the perfect wheels to take townies from point A to B quickly, cheaply and cleanly.
So, naturally I drove it straight to point Z — to a friend’s wedding down the country. Not your regular hotel beef-or-salmon bash, either. I drove it to a hippy chic, glamping-only, off-grid wedding in a socketless field.
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Off I went down the M4 at top speed — it’s a zippy little thing, given its electric torque takes it from stationary to very fast very quickly — and exit the motorway somewhere in the very middle of Ireland.
I glide past the last petrol station for miles without so much as a backward glance. I float from village to village, finally taking a sharp left up a muddy laneway and coming to a halt — Four Weddings and a Funeral-style — outside my accommodation for the next two nights. It’s a yurt, in which the only evidence of electricity is a lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Not only will I not be charging a Beemer here, but the iPhone will die, deprived of its usual evening feed.
I glance at the dash: the battery percentage icon, which was in the mid-eighties when I set off, has dropped to the early forties. That’ll be all that confident electric-torque overtaking. Then I check the iPhone battery: 11%. That’ll be my Facebook usage, plus the ESB app that shows me where the nearest official charging stations are. There’s one the next town over. I’ll deal with that tomorrow, I decide, as I slip on my dancing shoes and join the festivities.
The thing about electric cars is that so much of the focus, energy and creativity goes into perfecting the buzzy bits, like lithium-ion cells and voltages and lightness. As a result, EVs often end up uglified in the pursuit of technological advancement.
In black and blue, the i3 looks like a hatchback wedged inside a bouncy castle, or like a Mini being ingested by a minivan. In white, it looks even more obviously like a car with a blunt nose job, and a grimace that says it isn’t happy about it. The model I drove was grey, and so much the better. Not only does a single colour disguise its swollen curves better, but it simply isn’t the done thing to wear white to a wedding.
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When you sit inside, it’s a different picture. Everything in my eyeline is good-looking, well laid-out and roomy. Sat here, I could be at home on the sofa and the eucalyptus wood dash could be my coffee table. Incidentally, before Christmas I hired an i3 from GoCar, the Dublin car-share service, for two hours to do an Ikea run.
I managed to fit a fully assembled Strandmon wingback armchair and two Christmas trees in the back. A car doesn’t get much more living room-like than that.
Whereas I normally drive slouched over the wheel like Grampa from The Simpsons, the seat in the i3 improves my posture, encouraging me to sit up straight. When I get going on the open road, it improves my mood, too. I also enjoy the fact that the front and rear doors open away from each another, like those in a western saloon. The cockpit’s bells and whistles are no-nonsense and undistracting. Which is a good thing, since I spend a fair bit of time compulsively — if needlessly — checking the battery icon and wondering, again, about my proximity to
a socket.
On the morning my friend and her beau awake as Mr and Mrs, I awake to a car battery icon still sitting at a reassuring thirtysomething. Not only will that get me to the nearest official charging station but it’ll drive me around for a bit first and also charge my iPhone. Smartphone technology may have started a revolution but without my electric vehicle that morning, the revolution would not have had any juice.
Time for that recharge. I take the i3 back through the glamping site, along a laneway that leads to the main road, edging up slowly and silently behind some of last night’s revellers, out on the hunt for breakfast rolls. They aren’t yet aware I’m behind them; the eerie silence of EVs will forever unnerve me, not to mention creep out nearby pedestrians. Suddenly, I hear the purring of what sounds like a lawnmower. The range extender has kicked in. The walkers hear it too; they turn in surprise, and move aside.
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Next, to the e-car charge point in town, where a man selling mucky fresh eggs on the square confirms it’s out of order. A quick call to the ESB helpline tells me there’s an even better one — a fast charger — at the petrol station down the road.
I get myself a Lucozade, plus those four little deli sausage rolls for two euros, which should see me through until lunchtime. Meanwhile the i3 gets an impressive 98% battery power in under 45 minutes. That will not only see me home at top speed, but run me around the city for the rest of the week, for the same price as the sausage rolls.
“Any petrol?” asks the girl at the till. “Nope,” says I, perhaps more smugly than intended.
BMW i3 94AH REX
Price €59,201
Engine 1,984cc 4 cylinder turbo pertrol
Performance 0 to 100kph in 8.1 secs
Top speed 150kph
Fuel tank (range extender) 9 litres
C02 12g per km
Road tax Band A1 (€48 a year)
Rating ★★★★★
Verdict i-Do