[Theophilus]

Today, I had a terrible experience with my 2024 i5 M60. Some of it was related to the BMW, but most of it was related to non-Tesla EV ownership.

My church had an event about two hours away in Oxnard, CA, about 100 miles. Last night, I charged to 100% and made the drive to Oxnard with no traffic. The trip had 3.6 miles/kWh efficiency and I arrived with 54% charge left.

When I left the event, BMW's navigation calculated everything based on traffic and the heavy rain we had today. It determined I should stop at an EVGo charger in a random city that wasn't really on the way. By the time I arrived, I was down to 23% charge. Upon arrival, two stalls were open and three were used. The two stalls were both out of order. I waited for the remaining three for 30 min, but no one moved and I had to leave to be on time.

BMW navigation then continued my journey, but decided to take another detour to an Electrify America charger at a Target mall in another random city that wasn't really off the freeway. Both stations required about 20 min of city driving to get there. When I arrived, the rain was torrential and all the stalls were in use except one. A Hyundai was waiting. I asked the driver why he didn't use the open stall and he said, "It's not working." Sure enough, it had a black screen. I decided to try it, because I had Plug and Play Charging, of course, but after getting drenched by trying both connectors, I realized it would not work. Hyundai was still waiting and I was already late, so I left.

When leaving that plaza, which was elevated on a hilly street, the curb was at such an angle that I smashed into it with my low front skirt. I haven't checked for damage visually, but I definitely heard it.

Also, since I was drenched and the inside of the car was warm due to my body heat, the windows fogged up in addition to the poor visibility of the torrential rain. I wanted to defrost, but of course, I was down to 19% now.

BMW wanted me to try another charger down the way, but this time, I refused. I cancelled the BMW navigation and used CarPlay instead. This is what I should have done from the beginning.

After lots of driving, traffic, and warnings from the car, I finally reached my destination with 5% charge. BMW gave me a warning that, if I let the battery cool down, the charge and range would decrease further, so I took a few minutes to go to an Electrify America next to this familiar destination. Thank God, 3 of the 10 stalls were open.

I tried one, two, and three stalls while getting soaked again in the rain, but none of them worked. BMW reported a vague error with the Plug and Play Charging. The last resort was to try the third charger and use my credit card. That finally worked, and I charged from 5% to 25% before going to my meeting. The charge for the electricity was $8.40 at $0.56/kw. I'm supposed to get these sessions for 30 minutes per day free of charge.

Afterwards, I had to pick up my children and realized I needed to charge more, so I went back to the same charger and once again used my credit card to get up to 74% charge at an additional cost of $24.08.

I picked up my children and returned home with 59% charge. Thinking about tomorrow, I realize I'll probably need 80% at least, so I am charging again now.

Not a good day for EVs in my opinion. Yes, the car was comfortable, fast, etc., but I didn't enjoy it because of the stress surrounding the range. I didn't even use the radio because I was so focused on what was going to happen if I couldn't make it to my meeting.

The BMW 540 or 550e are looking quite good to me now.

[SkykingUSA]

Sorry to hear that story, especially about all the bad luck with the charging points. You may want to download an app called Plugshare if you don't already have it. It shows all the charging points around and I think can tell you how many are in service or maybe in use or both. Also, did you consider switching to eco mode to extend your range at any time, just in case? I think that's supposed to give you up to 25% more range when needed.

I have not done any long trips yet, but I hope my experience is better than the one you had today.

[bmw_maniac]

Sorry to hear about your experience. I can imagine how upset I would be if it happened to me.

Here in Germany Tesla has opened up all their Superchargers to the public, so there is not much of a difference any longer between Tesla and non-Tesla EVs from a charging network perspective.

A solid charging infrastructure is critical to the success of EVs.

[LVBMW]

So sorry to hear about your many mishaps. If plug and charge doesn’t work, however, you can easily activate the charger through the myBMW app. No need to pay. Or using the charging card that you should have in your Apple wallet.

[Sequence001]

That’s tough. Sorry you had to go through that. I’ve wondered what everyone’s experience is with Public charging in our cars.

Luckily I haven’t had the need to use a public charger, yet. I always activate the “Maximum Range” feature in Efficient mode when I go below 40% - 50%, or when I know im going to be on the road all day. It dramatically increases how many miles you can drive. In some cases adding 100 extra miles. Little known feature, but is a game changing detail that I believe should be talked about more.

I hope you give it a try again. These cars really are worth it imo.

[RichardInCA]

That sucks. Thanks for sharing the update. Hope the front skirt isn’t too badly damaged.

[Silvermember]

I can imagine your frustration.

Your use case may suit better with a PHEV (530e?) that uses battery whenever possible but allow you to fill tank up if you have long trips.

I think BMW strategy is smart to offer different version of the same car (EV, PHEV, ICE) so people without all use case can enjoy the same style!

[Stokkes]

Really sorry about what you’ve been through.

I’ve had an ev for 2+ years (Tesla) and the experience is great from a charging availability perspective (rest not so much)

It’s only a matter of time I believe before bmw owners will be able to take advantage of the Tesla network (lots of financial incentives for Tesla to allow this) and once that happens I think the experience will greatly increase. It’s already stated with ford, Riviab, etc. It’ll come for BMW soon enough (likely 2024 or early 2025 if rumours are true).

And as mentioned above definitely leverage max range when in doubt.

Driving an EV is a different mindset than gas. You have to kind of “buy into it”. We are all still early adopters. If that’s not for you then a PHEV is likely the better option.

[MikeElmendorf]

Did you try the "Max Range Mode" under Efficient Mode? Turned that on for the first time yesterday to see what it did and it dramatically increased the range. Good to know if I find myself in a charging pinch while traveling.

[Scrapula]

Sounds really stressful, I’m glad you were able to eventually make it to your destination. If you travel long distances often, then yeah, you might want to move to a hybrid. If it’s just once in a while, maybe rent a car for a day?

[Theophilus]

Thank you all for your kind words and suggestions.

Yes, I tried the Max Range mode, but on my car, it is limited to 60 mph, which wasn't good in the fast part of stop and go traffic. It would be great off the freeway, though.

This was definitely a lesson learned for me. I was reminded of a social media vignette featuring a guy using a gasoline generator to charge his Tesla. lol It looks like I need to invest in such a generator for times like this.

Or I could just get an ICE or hybrid car and wait a decade or so until battery technology matches or exceeds ICE range today.

I'll let you know what happens in the end, but I'm definitely not happy with the i5 experience now that I realize how much more limiting it is than my previous 540i.

[RichardInCA]

One thing of note - the range numbers seem a bit off here. Bear with me with some math:

You had a 100mile trip and arrived wtih 54%. So you’d used 46% of the usable battery capacity (81.2kWh) when you arrived = 37.35kWh. That gives you an efficiency of 2.68mi/kWh, not 3.6mi/kWh. And that’s before the rain started - rain negatively impacts efficiency as well, so I’m wondering why your i5 was getting such poor efficiency?

At 2.68mi/kWh your theoretical range is only 217.6miles, which is much lower than many of us are seeing with our i5M60’s. (I’ve been averaging 3.4mi/kWh for the last 3months, ~900miles/month)

Still sorry this happened.

[drexplode]

That range anxiety experience is a bummer. Drive distance of 2h is in that spot between confident and not sure I’m going to make it. It’s an unfortunate event and like most buyers the worst fear came near true, worst case is had to call for a tow. This is a learning process and when you make this trip again I bet you make some adjustments. My advice, treat it as a learning experience. Next time I guarantee it won’t happen again. Like another user mentioned - PlugShare is a great option to plan a longer than average travel. Try to find a station with a high average score.

[SkykingUSA]

Originally Posted by RichardInCA

That sucks. Thanks for sharing the update. Hope the front skirt isn’t too badly damaged.

I forgot about that, but it's a good point! I was lucky during my first week of ownership because I also smushed my front skirt when parking one day. Luckily it was just into some loose dirt and didn't cause any damage to the car. It was a parking lot where there are trees planted in the curbs between parking aisles and those trees are planted in a mound of earth. So, although the front skirt fit over the curb ok, it pushed into the dirt and wood chips around the trees. Picture below of where I parked.

The reason I mention it is to remind others that the front may be lower than what you drove before (I came from driving a pickup truck, so never worried about a low front skirt). Now, I always use the parking view and don't even pull in over the front curb anymore just to be safe.

[Scrapula]

Originally Posted by RichardInCA

At 2.68mi/kWh your theoretical range is only 217.6miles, which is much lower than many of us are seeing with our i5M60’s. (I’ve been averaging 3.4mi/kWh for the last 3months, ~900miles/month)

Still sorry this happened.

I have been getting 2.8 to 2.9 with rain and temps in the upper 30’s to low 40’s. Today, it’s sunny and mid 60’s (yay Spring). My trips today were all 4.4 leaving the house and 2.8 coming home (up hill), which averages to 3.5 or so. With heavy rain, and more water on the road, I could see 2.6.

[pfannenstiel]

I'm so sorry this happened to you but appreciate you sharing with the forum. I'm switching to BMW from Tesla after 9 years with of easy roadtripping with free, unlimited supercharging. I agree with others that we are still early adopters and are suffering the pains of being such. After seeing your post I googled what others are experiencing and unfortunately it does seem like there are a lot of broken chargers in the EA network, especially in California (?). Here's a link to a helpful Reddit post where one of the posters said that if you find a broken charger customer service *might* be able to reboot it and get it working again. https://www.reddit.com/r/VWiD4Owners..._a_total_scam/

[scas12]

Originally Posted by Theophilus

Thank you all for your kind words and suggestions.

Yes, I tried the Max Range mode, but on my car, it is limited to 60 mph, which wasn't good in the fast part of stop and go traffic. It would be great off the freeway, though.

This was definitely a lesson learned for me. I was reminded of a social media vignette featuring a guy using a gasoline generator to charge his Tesla. lol It looks like I need to invest in such a generator for times like this.

Or I could just get an ICE or hybrid car and wait a decade or so until battery technology matches or exceeds ICE range today.

I'll let you know what happens in the end, but I'm definitely not happy with the i5 experience now that I realize how much more limiting it is than my previous 540i.

So sorry this happened to you, that’s not fun. If I can suggest one thing as you think through your decision on i5 vs other options. Plan to buy something for 90-95% of your trips, that way you only have to think about range issues 5-10% of the time and for those time advanced planning is probably tolerable. The reason I say that is that even with PHEV or ICE cars you will have some other trade off that you may not like.

Good luck, hope this never happens to you again.

[digriz]

Thank you for sharing your experience. Driving an EV in North America is still challenging, although the challenge is somewhat reduced for those who drive Teslas. But some issues linger even when one can access the Supercharger network: the longer time to recharge means that every trip requiring a recharge must be planned and becomes instantly longer; the lack of protection from the elements in most recharging spots is baffling as we should have learned that lesson from gas stations; and the inability to determine the state of a charging spot given we are all forced to use apps and cumbersome authorization systems is much worse than for regular gas stations.

I was fully aware of these issues when I considered an EV and I still went for it because to me the advantages outweigh the issues; but I am still looking forward to EVs becoming mainstream so that hopefully most of these issues are resolved. Some positive steps forward are happening (access to Tesla network, new charging spots with canopies and amenities, supervised charging locations, etc). I choose to be optimistic. But when I read about some of the failures, I shudder and cringe...

I hope you'll never have to suffer such a bad experience again.

[SkykingUSA]

Just "for the fun of it", I decided to go to the three locations in my city where there are Electrify America charging stations today. I wanted to connect my car to charge to make sure it works (the car, and the free charging). At 2pm I arrived at the first one, and around 3pm is when I left the third one. At each one, there were some chargers not working, and there were at least two cars before me in line waiting to plug in. I was surprised they were all so busy at 2pm - 3pm on a Monday. I didn't want to wait around, so continued my errands and just charged up at home like normal.

However, it gave me a small taste of the waiting game if I had to rely on public EA chargers. I was hoping it would be a quicker/better experience in my relatively small city of around 230,000 people. Since I am off work this week, I'll probably try again another time later this week, just to see if I can get lucky and not have to wait somewhere.

[Scrapula]

There are 3 locations with EA 350 chargers near me. The closest one to me is pretty busy. But, it’s at a Target and people leave when they are done shopping. The other ones seem to usually be empty. One of these also has the only Tesla chargers in my area. The EA chargers sometimes get Tesla’d, with Teslas blocking the charger and not plugged in. Just the assholery you see with some Tesla owners, especially since their chargers opened up.

[LuisBoston]

Originally Posted by SkykingUSA

Just "for the fun of it", I decided to go to the three locations in my city where there are Electrify America charging stations today.

Since I am off work this week, I'll probably try again another time later this week, just to see if I can get lucky and not have to wait somewhere.

Originally Posted by Scrapula

There are 3 locations with EA 350 chargers near me. The closest one to me is pretty busy. But, it’s at a Target and people leave when they are done shopping. The other ones seem to usually be empty. One of these also has the only Tesla chargers in my area.

You can use the EA app to see what the charging situation is like at any EA station. It tells you which are In Use and which are Unavailable (out of service).

Just open the app any time, no need to head over there. I guess the MyBMW app allows for it too. It'd be great if there was a high quality webcam, so we could see if there was a queue.

Note: obviously if there is a queue a charger may show as Available if in between charges, but it won't last long.

[LuisBoston]

Originally Posted by digriz

Thank you for sharing your experience. Driving an EV in North America is still challenging, although the challenge is somewhat reduced for those who drive Teslas.

I was fully aware of these issues when I considered an EV and I still went for it because to me the advantages outweigh the issues; but I am still looking forward to EVs becoming mainstream so that hopefully most of these issues are resolved.

We are all very much still beta testers. We might be on Beta 2.0 or 3.0, but still in beta.

This is why Hertz etc. going full bore on EVs was a mistake. It's great to have the option for folks that ask for it, but it was terrible to foist EVs on unsuspecting rental customers. Many don't know how to adjust the seats, let alone find a charger.