BMW i3 dissection

How the parking brake works

I’ve had my BMW i3 for over three years now. It’s the best car I’ve ever owned.

When I first got it other owners were talking about an amazing report that told you exactly what it was made of. Munro Associates, who specialise in this kind of thing, had taken an i3 and completely dismantled it. They took every nut, bolt, wire, microprocessor and whatnot and worked out how much each cost to make and how they fit together. It was apparently an awesome read. Only snag was that word was it cost around 100,000 dollars to get a copy of the report. That price has now dropped a bit.

For the tiny sum of ten dollars you can now obtain all 850Mb of data in the form of 10 large pdf documents. You don’t learn how to mend the car but you do get an amazing level of detail on how it was put together. For a nerd like me it is a wonderful read.

BMW i3 Factory Tour

Click through the image for the full 360 degree experience

Monday, tour day, we were up bright and early and, after a quick trip to a local Aldi for cereals, we headed over to the hotel to meet up with the rest of the tour group and go on our way to the factory via tram and bus. Everyone was very excited.

I'm a member of the BMW i3 UK Facebook group. I've even posted on there once or twice. I joined the group when I got my BMW i3 and it is a fantastic resource for owners and anyone thinking of getting an electric car. The folks there are all lovely too. And they'd organised a trip to see the car being made.

When left the university I was determined not to do anything silly like buy a large expensive car. So, I bought a small expensive car instead. It's the nicest car I've ever owned. It's powered by a battery, and a tiny petrol generator that kicks in when the battery runs down. You can use it to go a lot further than your average electric vehicle. It has a carbon fibre passenger compartment and a metal chassis. Like a supercar.

There is only one company in the world who is mass-producing cars like this. And there is only one factory in the world where they're doing it. And at 11:30 today they are going to show us around it. Very excited. After a tram and bus ride (they do trams really well in Leipzig) we arrived at around 11:00 and pottered around the vast visitor's foyer waiting for our tour to start.

And then we were off. They showed us pretty much everything. From robots making the carbon fibre safety cell to the moment where they screwed the wheels on and drove the car off the production line. I can't show you any pictures, but BMW rather helpfully made a video that you can watch if you like.

The tour lasted around three hours, but I didn't actually notice this. I was too busy being impressed. Having seen how they make it, I now like my car even more. Very, very impressive. Some fun facts that I think I remembered correctly.

• Each stage of the production of the i3 lasts around 7 minutes. The cars are on little robot vehicles that move along the production line. They also build the i8 (the proper supercar) here too. Production stages for this car are 30 minutes long. The folks who make the i8 must be very, very skilled. It takes a few hours to make each car.
• The pace of production is set by the time it takes the glue to dry when they are assembling the structural elements. They do use bolts to hold things together, but these are used for alignment, not strength.  
• Each car is built to a particular configuration for a specific customer. This extends to the wiring looms which are fitted to the car. Basically, if it isn't on the spec, there won't be a wire for it. 
• They save a lot of paint because they only have to paint the outsides of the panels on the i3 because there is no need to protect the chassis or the body panels against rust.
• All the carbon fibre that they cut away during manufacture is recycled to make other components in the car. 
• The carbon fibre body shell is around a third of the weight of a metal one. 
• They can't paint carbon fibre. Paint wont stick to it. The roof of the i3 is a carbon fibre panel and if you look closely you can see that it is covered with a form of varnish, you can see the fibres in the surface.
• The point where they connect the car body to the metal chassis is called "the marriage". They have around five minutes to get the two elements aligned before the glue sets. Normally robots do this, but if the robots hit a snag they have a few minutes for humans to rush in and sort it out. 
• They have some robots (they are coloured white) which can work alongside workers on the line, with no safety cage required. 

After the tour we got our bus and tram back to Leipzig, had a quick break at the flat and then headed out for a celebration dinner at Ratskeller, a place in the basement of Leipzig City Hall. 

It was great. Good food, great company, talk about cars and lots of other things. Thanks to the group for organising everything. We've got a few more days in Leipzig. Looking forward to seeing what the rest of the city has to offer. 

Search for Power

I took number one wife out for a spin in the new car today. As far as the nearest high-speed charging point........

Automotive Shenanigans

I would think that the primary purpose of a motor show is to make you want to buy a car. In this respect the Seattle Auto Show has must be counted as a success as far as I'm concerned. 

In amongst all the monster pickups and unfamiliar brands of the show I spotted this little gem. It's a BMW i3. It's an electric car, but you can get a version with what they call a "range extender", essentially a small generator that can top up the battery when it runs down a bit. Which means that your range is not limited by how much electricity you have left and you are never in the situation where the battery runs completely flat. 

I'd read about the i3 but never actually seen one in the flesh. Until last week in Seattle. I really liked the look of the car and made a mental note to check it out when I got back to the UK. I definitely make the most rational purchasing decisions when I've got jetlag....

Anyhoo, I went and sat in one earlier in the week and discovered that it fits me just fine. And apparently one of the rites of passage for retirement (although of course I'm not really retired) is the purchase of a shiny car. So said the jetlag. So I began the search for one that was in my budget. Which proved tricky. Until I found what seemed the perfect vehicle. Only snag is that it was 250 miles away from Hull. In Canterbury. 

So...... Today I got up at 6:15 and took the train to Canterbury with a return ticket I hoped I wouldn't have to use, and an overnight bag if I had to stop and take on wood (or whatever) on the journey back. A test drive convinced me that it was the car that I wanted, and after a modicum of paperwork, they let me drive the car away there and then. So there was just the matter of a 250 mile night drive which included the Dartford Tunnel and the M25. In a car with a 75 mile electric range. 

Erin said I'd be fine. And I was. In fact I got home with the battery still half charged. I had to stop a couple of times to add petrol to the tiny tank that the Range Extender runs from but apart from that it was a comfortable journey. 

The aim of the Range Extender is not really to let you drive 250 miles in one go, but to allow you to go a little further on a charge (hence the name). But it is nice to know that you can do long journeys if necessary. 

Thanks to the folks at Broadoak Canterbury for looking after me so well, particularly Erin who deals with their electric vehicles. I never ever expected to be a BMW driver, but here I am. 

And the Cube will be staying around too, but now in the hands of number one wife.