BMW I3 WALLPARERS

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Where do You Want Your Personal Transportation Energy To Come From?

This is a question I ask people frequently when we are discussing the future of electric vehicles.

Do you want to give him your money?

You can continue to buy gasoline, and send about 70 cents of every dollar you spend on it out of the US. That's right, about 70 cents of every dollar you spend on gasoline leaves the US economy. It's true not all of it goes to the radical Middle Eastern countries you hear me crowing about. Actually, Canada is our biggest supplier of oil and they are far from radical and threatening to the US. However, I don't want ANY of my money going to regimes that hate us and funnel some of that money to sponsor terror groups.

EV + PV is a great combo!

After a hundred years of having no choice but to use gasoline, we finally will have a choice. You, as a consumer will have the power to decide for yourself what kind of fuel you want to use for your personal transportation. One of the most satisfying things about driving an electric car and having a solar array is knowing that I produce my own energy for my car. It's something that you would probably never think about unless you had an EV and a solar array, but it's really liberating. We have all become so conditioned to think that when you need fuel for your car you go to a gas station. It can't be that bad, everybody does it right? Well, if you think that sending a billion dollars every day out of the US economy isn't that bad then yeah, I guess it's not that bad.

I'd rather he get my money than OPEC

Even if you don't use solar electric to charge your EV, using domestic electricity is cheaper, cleaner and it keeps every penny of what you spend on electricity here in the US. Your money goes to the coal, natural gas or renewable energy supplier that supplies the fuel to the power plants. It goes to the power plants that employ local workers, and it goes to your local utility that again employs local workers.

Just about every major auto maker is currently working on electric cars that they will be selling in the near future. The first BMW EV to be sold will be the 2013 BMW i3 which is what the MINI-E program was designed to gather information for. There are already cars like the Tesla Roadster, the Nissan LEAF and the Chevy Volt on the market that can completely eliminate your need to purchase gasoline or in the case of the volt, drastically reduce it.

Today's electric cars are basically the first generation production EV's and will have some limitations like range and charge time so they will not work for everyone, just yet. However a good percentage of Americans could live perfectly fine with a 100 mile BEV as one of the household cars and I suspect many will embrace the opportunity to buy a car that can be powered either the sun or a domestic energy source. At least we finally now have a choice.

BMW i3 & CFRP, Perfect Together

One of the main goals BMW had with the development of the Megacity car now known as the i3, was to reduce the weight as much as possible while providing a strong, safe passenger cell. The extensive use of carbon fiber reinforced plastics or CFRP, has allowed them to do just that. While the use of CFRP isn't a new idea in the automotive industry, using it as extensively as BMW is on the i3 is groundbreaking. It's been written that by using CFRP as extensively as they are, it has cut the weight of the vehicle by as much as 700lbs. This will allow BMW to use less of the expensive batteries and still hit their target 100 mile range. That will also reduce cost and further reduce weight since the batteries are also heavy. The above video talks about how BMW is using CFRP and references the i3 a couple times.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Hybrid Porsche 918 sketches

BMW Website now has i3 Information

BMW now has an i3 section on their website. While it doesn't have any new information that hasn't been available here and on the internet for a while now, at least they have begun to post information about it. While it's still over two years away from production, there are a lot of people following it and waiting for every bit of information as it's released.