Small price premium for longer-range BMW i3

BMW Group Australia will charge a relatively small price premium for the new, upgraded '94Ah' version of its i3 electric hatch when it arrives here in two months.

Company chief Marc Werner this week confirmed the longer-range i3, announced in Germany in May, will be available Down Under from October.

Thanks to a larger-capacity battery, the upgraded i3 94Ah offers about 50 per cent more driving range than both the existing all-electric i3 and the range-extender i3, both of which will continue on sale, expanding the i3 line-up to four models.

The i3 is currently priced from $63,900, while the i3 'REX' costs $69,900. A BMW source told motoring.com.au the improved versions, which increase the capacity of the lithium-ion battery from 60 Amp/hours to 94Ah, will come with a "surprisingly small" price premium over the standard models.

Therefore we expect the i3 94Ah to cost less than $70,000 and the i3 94Ah REX to be priced under $80,000.

Increasing energy density from 22 to 33kWh, the mid-cycle battery upgrade is claimed to extend the Bavarian EV’s range from 190km to 300km according to Europe’s NEDC standard. BMW says that allows it to comfortably deliver 200km of real-world driving with the air-conditioning on.

Meanwhile, the new i3 94Ah REX, which comes with a BMW scooter-sourced 28kW 650cc twin-cylinder petrol engine, increases its official range figure from 340km to 450km.

Both 'premium' models retain the existing i3’s rear-mounted 125kW/250Nm electric motor, which drives the rear wheels and delivers 0-100km/h acceleration in 7.3 seconds, and both weigh the same, at 1245kg.

Thanks to its 120kg engine, the REX takes slightly longer to 100km/h -- in 8.1 seconds -- but offers the same 260-litre boot capacity and consumes only 0.6L/100km and emits just 12g/km of CO2.

In both i3s, the new battery occupies the same space as the existing 60Ah unit and uses the same 12.6kWh of energy per 100km on the NEDC EV test, and the rear-motor, rear-drive layout continues to employ a single-speed transmission that tops out at 150km/h.

The i3’s battery has eight modules, each with 12 storage cells, and battery supplier Samsung SDI has tweaked the internal components of the cells and their electrolytes to produce the extra range.

While 18.8kWh of the current i3’s 22kWh can be effectively used, about 29kWh of the new battery’s 33kWh can be used, which BMW claims as an effectiveness record in its class.

Both versions of the battery come with an eight-year, 100,000km warranty from BMW, which will also offer a more powerful 11kW wall-mounted charging station to recharge the bigger batteries in the same three-hour timeframe as the existing i3 with its 7.4kW charger.

However, it will take longer to recharge from a standard domestic power point, with the added capacity pushing a full recharge out from about eight hours to around 10 hours.

With a 50kW direct-current fast-charger, the 94Ah i3s take up to 40 minutes to charge to 80 per cent – instead of up to 30 minutes for the standard 60Ah models.

BMW's i3 has so far not lived up to BMW's global sales forecast of 30,000 annually, with just over 24,000 sold last year, in part due to slow sales in Germany, where a €1 billion EV subsidy program from May this year is expected to lift sales.

However, the i3 has proved popular in the US, UK, The Netherlands, Norway -- where it's BMW's top-selling model – and Australia, where BMW sold more than 200 i3s (and almost 100 i8s) last year, with 75 per cent being REXs.

The scheme is the first concrete steps the government has made to meet its target, announced in 2009, of 1 million electrified cars on German roads by 2020.

The number of models in BMW's i sub-brand will expand to seven with the recently confirmed i8 Roadster, and by 2019 BMW is expected to add an all-electric and plug-in hybrid sports sedan dubbed the i5.