A few days ago, the new BMW i3 with the 94Ah battery package went on sale in Germany. The updated, small electric car is designed to fit a wider audience and convince the last doubters to drop the range driving anxiety.
The big news in May was that BMW would be upgrading the i3’s battery cells from 60 Ah to 94 Ah. This means the 2017 i3 will have an EPA range of 114 miles, up from the current 81 miles per charge. These new battery cells are physically the same size as the currently used cells, but can hold 50 percent more energy and are only slightly heavier.
The design of the i3 also allows retrofitting new battery technologies. While customers in the U.S. won’t have this option for now, BMW gives i3 owners in Europe the opportunity of retrofitting their purely electric for a price of 7,000 euros.
In Germany, the base price of the pre-update fully electric i3 is 36,150 euros, while the new version sells for 1,200 euros more. In addition, there is environmental bonus of 4,000 euros which further reduces the cost of the electric car. Those who need additional reach, can combine both battery variants of the BMW i3 with the Range Extender feature. The additional two-cylinder petrol engine increases the purchase price by 5,000 euros, but also increases the driving range to over 300km.
