@@dchamp1337 Dude, back when the Chang Li was delivered, the article for a short time included his phone number AND address. The Torchinsky stalkers already been having them digits and more! 😂
If the previous owner did long commutes on the Range Extender, that tends to hurt the battery. If you get Bimmer code and the correct Bluetooth adapter, you can restore the full features of the range extender as intended for europe. This will allow the range entender to power up anytime you are below 75% battery. Important for Roadtrips. You can hold the battery above 25% on the highway and prevent it from running down too low. It also helps if you know that you have a big climb to make, you can maintain 75% until you hit the climb and use up battery and gas engine.
Very cool find, David!.. Congrats! That car should easily hold up for another 135k. Perfect quirky car for @The Autopian... can't wait to see more in this project (?) series. That interior is pretty damn cool. Nice.
Really lucked out on that California law warranting the battery. Anywhere else, and you’d probably wouldn’t want to buy an electric car with that much mileage. Also, you really lucked out with the leather seats, my sons 3 series had the leather wearing thin at 90,000 miles.
You know it has a FRAME, right? It's body on frame. Gotta be the last passcar with an actual frame. That range extender is PURE GERMAN poor engineering. It charges the battery a little, but the tank is so small it's mostly useless, and it can't charge the battery enough to propel the car. It "extends" the battery.
The range extender got software-limited in several ways (including tank size, believe it or not) in the US because of legal reasons. I think DT mentioned previously he plans on "coding" it with the more useful Euro settings, which include being able to use the full tank contents, and more choice of when the range extender turns on.
@@TheZeusJuice Not an expert on that vehicle, but my understanding was the gas engine made enough juice to add some range, but could never make enough to actually power the engine, nor could it sit there and run and recharge the battery. This was the complaint at the time - it WASN'T like an EV with an onboard generator, nor was it like the Volt which could run forever on gas. Am I wrong about all this?
@@kipamore You're not wrong, but that's not the complete picture; in the US, the engine wouldn't turn on until the battery was so low (6%) the i3 had difficulty maintaining highway speed. Outside the US, you could set it to turn on whenever (even 75%), so even if the generator wasn't enough to charge the batteries, at least you could keep up with traffic while only draining the battery a little bit.
@@kipamore the I3 really is a pure electric powered vehicle. the chevy volt is a hybrid that can use gas or electric. BMW was ahead of the times adding the range extender. now RAM is saying it's all electric pickup truck will have a similar range extender gas generator.
@@gary_beniford Correct. I actually think Ram won't sell many trucks with a range extender. But we'll see. Speaking of we'll see, I'm eager to see how David gets on with this turd on a day to day basis. People flocked in droves to NOT buy the i3 when it was new, but as a cheap used car it's super interesting.
![I Bought The Cheapest BMW i3 In America - David's Electric Adventure [Part One]](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
