BMW i

v12 to 12v · Nov 27, 2012

JRP3 said:
The over all vehicle shape does not seem that bad but the weird window shape does not sit well with me. Looks as if it's trying too hard to be different.

My oh my. BMW, what were you thinking??

dpeilow · Nov 27, 2012

I think this will be an important car for the industry, but I agree that window shape is just plane weird and I'm not digging that orange at all. Hopefully this will change by production time.

vfx · Nov 27, 2012

Are those buttons?

surfingslovak · Nov 27, 2012

dpeilow said:
I think this will be an important car for the industry, but I agree that window shape is just plane weird and I'm not digging that orange at all. Hopefully this will change by production time.

Agreed. I believe this is just a computer rendering of the coupe concept, but it borrows heavily from the production version of the i3.

Sparky · Nov 27, 2012

I like it.
I also like that BMW started with a clean sheet of paper for this design and went after the weight issue and a simple, minimal interior. Can't wait to see what the handling is like. I was not that excited with the ActiveE I drove. I hope this is more fun. I'm guessing $50k, which makes the Model S seem like such a better value.
But in general, how cool is it that we're starting to see all these EV options. I'm liking the idea of getting an i3 or RAV4EV coming off a lease in a few years to replace the LEAF. We'll see.

surfingslovak · Nov 27, 2012

vfx said:
Are those buttons?

Yes, iDrive all the way! I'm hoping for Siri integration and voice control.

Click to open

doug · Nov 27, 2012

I like it too. I'd be happy if they managed to bring it to market with no changes, assuming the range and performance are good.

JRP3 · Nov 28, 2012

Comments here overwhelmingly negative http://www.autoblog.com/2012/11/28/bmw-i3-coupe-concept-la-2012/
My favorite so far, with typos:

Seems like the designer fall asleep during the second falf of the car.

domenick · Nov 28, 2012

I 2nd that consensus.

I like a lot of things about the i3. Chassis materials, rear-wheel drive, smallish size, the 170 horsepower figure.

The styling is, to put it very kindly, more gut-wrenching then a 2-day old chicken salad sandwich.

TEG · Nov 28, 2012

My first glance reminded me of the old Pontiac Aztec (for some reason) which isn't a very flattering association...

brianman · Nov 28, 2012

I like the Aztec look better.

surfingslovak · Nov 30, 2012

brianman said:
I like the Aztec look better.

I quizzed Jacob Harb about the tires used on the i3 coupe concept during the electronaut event on Thursday, and others chimed in. They look a lot more efficient than what's on the ActiveE currently. Somehow, the powers that be still managed to tun them into runflats though, which is a bummer. Jacob seemed genuinely surprised that the runflat concept was so universally disliked. An LA driver immediately commented how expensive they were to replace, and I mentioned the unnecessarily high weight.

JRP3 · Nov 30, 2012

surfingslovak · Dec 8, 2012

We had an interesting discussion about the cargo space in the i3 on MNL. I'm cross-posting it here, in case it was of interest. The photo below was provided by tommolog.

tommolog said:
It doesn't have a large hatchback area unless you fold the seats down, only ~ 7cu-ft. There is a front trunk also, but again it's small and can only hold about one grocery-bag sized item.

evnow said:
surfingslovak said:

evnow said:

EPA rates Leas as 20 + cu ft.

Click to expand...

Isn't that with folded rear seats? Not sure about about the difference in EPA vs SAE rating, I will try to find out more.

330 L / 28.31 L/cu ft = 12 cu ft (2012)
370 L / 28.31 L/cu ft = 13 cu ft (2013)

Click to expand...

No, EPA number is behind 2nd row of seats.

I wonder if the cargo cover is the culprit.

Here is the official number for the Leaf from Nissan's website, which states that is had 14.5 cubic feet of luggage space. This is with the rear seats up. I found another reference, which has 24 cubic feet of cargo space with rear seats down. I hope this settles it.

I looked up how trunk space is calculated in the US and in Germany, and the current standards seem to be both perplexing and archaic. There are definitely different methods for this across the globe, which might help explain why different numbers are being thrown around by car manufacturers for the same vehicle. That said, you might enjoy reading this. The current regulatory situation apparently provided more than enough material for a PhD thesis. I'm not even kidding!

Tobias Baumann said:

New car buying decisions more often than not factor in the capacity of the luggage compartment. Using modern CAD systems, it's only possible to compute continuous volume. However, customers typically like to pack a few bulky objects, such as suitcases or bottle crates, into the trunk compartment. For this issue there are two different standards used to compute usable trunk volume.

In Germany, and the rest of the EU, DIN 70020 is used. It utilizes small boxes sized 200 x 100 x 50 mm, and the requirement is to pack as many boxes as possible into the cargo space. In the US, SAE J1100 is used. This standard asks that boxes of several types and sizes are to be packed. In contrast to the continuous volume computation, this represents an NP-hard problem.

Until recently, car manufacturers used CAD systems to compute trunk space manually, which with time-consuming and inefficient. Trunk capacity is determined very late during the car design process. If it was known earlier in the car design process, this data could be used to adapt the design, and facilitate more efficient space utilization.

In this dissertation we present new algorithms to compute valid trunk dimension according to the US standard SAE J1100. We developed a software package, which can handle these three-dimensional problems. This software can process CAD input data and computes packings according to the standards mentioned above efficiently. As well, we integrated an algorithm topack arbitrary geometries into the trunk.

The algorithm is graph-based, and produces maximum weighted independent sets on a so-called conflict graph. This graph can be derived froma grid discretisation of the trunk space. We present a framework to eliminate a large portion of the vertices of a graph without affecting the quality of the optimal solution.

Click to expand...

Click to open

surfingslovak · Dec 9, 2012

evnow said:
This is what EPA says : 23.2 cu ft.

http://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/Detailsresult.do?vehicle_ID=153381

That is indeed very interesting. I found the reference for 24 cubic feet with rear seats down. It's on Nissan's US website. I looked at several other vehicles on the EPA site you referenced above, and their numbers were rarely in agreement with manufacturer data. That's very surprising, since SAE J1100 should be used for all officially reported numbers in the US.

I don't know what to think of this, and how one can arrive at such different results. The EPA has the Versa at 15 cubic feet, and the Leaf at 23.2. That's about 50% difference. Meanwhile Nissan lists both the Leaf and the Versa at about 14 cubic feet, with only 5% difference between the two.

Be that as it may, I would fully expect to hear different cargo space numbers for the i3, depending on the market and method used to measure it. Since we know now that it's not the continuous volume, but the combined volume of a number of boxes with certain dimensions that counts, perhaps it's worth taking all this with a grain of salt.

Please have a look at the photos below. I could be wrong, but I believe that the i3 will be fairly close to the Volt in terms of luggage space.

2012 Leaf