Hiring a BMW i3 in Mallorca

Something a little different from my Welsh walking blog posts. Other things have been cutting into my walking time and one of those was going on holiday. Whilst there I hired a BMW i3 as an experiment and this post is about that experience.

I have for some time been considering a change to an electric vehicle after a long series of diesel motors and a spectacularly profligate petrol one or two. I have read lots of reviews and followed Robert Llewellyn and Jonny Smiths “Fully Charged” Channel on Youtube. Last year, I visited the show they organised at Silverstone and had my first ride in a Tesla. This year I went one better at the show and test drove a BMW i3 round a very damp Stowe circuit. Though I knew the different mechanics behind the delivery of an electric power train to a combustion one, the feel of it still surprised me. I also found it very much to my taste. The handling surprised me too. I expected some hilarious understeer from its skinny eco-tyres on such a damp surface but it hung on gamely at the front.

The i3 went from an interesting engineering novelty in my eyes to something I could consider owning. It is still a little small for me as an only car, but the times when I actually NEED something bigger or faster or louder are limited these days. What would it be like to live with? Would the novelty wear off? The opportunity arose to find out when I booked a holiday to Majorca. A few rental companies were offering EV’s and I decided to go with Sixt. It still felt like a gamble, but Sixt were good at responding to my questions and I pushed ahead.

This is really a report about two separate things. The first is the i3 and how it copes with Mallorca. The second part is about the experience of trying to use an EV in Mallorca which could apply to other electric vehicles too.

The i3 was launched in 2013, which is getting on a bit in EV years. Two boosts in battery performance since launch means that the old range extender with a tiny motorbike engine generator has now gone from the range. Other manufacturers have also found ways to shove more batteries into their conventionally constructed cars to give more range. However, the still unique carbon fibre composite body on an aluminium frame means a car which is respectably light - 280Kg less than the similarly sized and capacity Renault Zoe for example. My rental car was the normal not the S version and in base spec. As the Sixt rep who enthusiastically pointed out on his comprehensive briefing, it was the latest 120ah version (40KW) with 360km (225 mile) range. The i3 cabin is still a very pleasant place to be even in base specification with a decent amount of equipment. This included the all important aircon. I could have used the BMW app I have for my car to turn this on in advance in the i3, but I would have had to change its nationality to British. I thought it might object to this what with Brexit and Gibraltar and all. I didn’t think Sixt would have been too thrilled either.

The interior is light and airy and visibility is excellent save for the thick A pillars. The dark colouring of the interior lacks the Scandinavian chic of the optional interiors but is still modern and individual. BMW have made use of every inch of the cabin with minimal intrusion. I have always had a soft spot for cars that can pull off this trick - like the original Mercedes A Class or the Audi A2. It tends to result in slightly oddball looks, but I can forgive that when form follows function. The “suicide” doors are more than a gimmick. They offer better access than a 3 door would or tiny rear doors with limited opening. You have to remember to shut them first though. There was just the two of us so we didn’t need to use them. The rear seats are OK for adults in terms of space, but not the comfiest as the backrest are rather upright.

Small, but well-shaped boot won’t take 2 large cases but is cavernous with the seats down due to the boxy shape.

The boot is small but well shaped but it would not take our 2 large cases. Dropping the seats uses pull cords. I’ve not seen these on Beemer before, so it took a while to find them. The good news is that the seats drop nice and flat and the aperture is big and boxy. There is also a frunk (or froot) under the bonnet. It is about the size of a large shopping bag. It swallowed the fast and mains charging leads and the tire repair kit but there was no room for anything else. Still it kept those items out of the boot space. There is no space under the boot floor. There is a large “verboten” looking steel plate under the boot carpet. The motor is under there and drives the rear wheels - this is a Beemer after all.

Due to the battery pack the boot floor and passenger floor is quite high. My Dad struggled a little with entry due to the wide sills and the firm seat back bolsters. However, once you are in, they are very comfy and neither of us had any aches or pains on longer drives.

Unobstructed access to the interior with the rear “suicide door” open. The front seat can be folded forward too - if you can find the hidden release in the back of the headrest.

The small screen behind the wheel gives speed and charge information and you can scroll through vehicle settings. The centre screen is the familiar iDrive setup. It is familiar to me anyway who has owned a fair few Beemers. This was useful, as a combination of my knowledge of the interface and my Dad’s schoolboy German was required to set it to English rather than German. On the wheel are the controls for start, stop, direction and brake. Climate controls sit under the central screen. The instrumentation is minimal but clear. The U-shaped meter moves right the more energy you demand and left if you are recharging. The left side shows trip computer information and you can cycle through the stats by using the column stalk. The meter at the bottom shows your predicted range and the battery’s state of charge.

Press the brake and hit Start and it makes a games console like bong - then nothing. It can be eerie when you first experience a combustion car with start-stop technology but this is another level of nothingness. Move the selector to D and press the pedal and off you go. Back off and you slow down due to regenerative braking and I do mean slow down. There is no coasting in an i3, backing off is like it would be in 2nd gear in manual. It takes a while to get used to, but after a few days, you start to begrudge the occasions you have to resort to actual braking and its lost energy. Heavy braking is usually because someone has failed to realise you are there. Currently, a low speed warning noise is an option on the i3. I am not sure if that will change with the new EU directive. I grew up in a holiday town, so I know people on holiday leave their road sense at home. Vigilance was essential not to rack up a body count. It also occasionally seems like the i3 becomes invisible, but it’s a while since I have driven in Europe, so maybe it’s always like that. Regenerative braking also tends to catch out tailgaters. I am pretty sure that the brake lights come on when you lift or I would have been filling in a lot of accident forms. However, there must be a tipping point on the accelerator for just when they come on. You will still slowdown much faster than someone in a conventional car and especially one with an auto box - like most Audis have. I hate to make such generalisations, but the top 3 badges I saw most often getting ominously close to the i3’s bluff rump had four rings, a lion or a three-pointed star. The i3 seems to bring out the worst in some drivers. Either they felt their masculinity challenged by electrobeemer’s overt econess or they just equate EV with slow. Either way it tended to result in some highly marginal overtaking manoeuvres, often accompanied by filling my hippy car’s cabin with diesel particulates. “Way to spoil my vibe, Dude!” The irony is that overtaking is something the i3 is really, really good at. Drop back a little, indicate, press the accelerator hard, zoom past with a distant jet whoosh sound, back off and blend in. I have had cars with a lot more power which would not complete the task in the same time. No messing about getting in the right gear, then changing gear, then trying to bleed off enough speed to get back in again. You will get a lot of practice overtaking cyclists in Mallorca these days as they are everywhere. There is the same problem as with pedestrians in that you need to careful that they know you are behind them, as too many rely only on their ears for that task. At least when you do overtake them you don’t compound the surprise by filling their overworked lungs with particulates and fumes.

The i3’s body is made from carbon fibre reinforced plastic which offsets the weight of the batteries. BMW is so proud of this material it leaves it on show in the cabin.

The impression I got from driving the i3 at rainy Silverstone was the same here in sunny Mallorca. The i3 feels like a light car with a big engine. My current BMW has a turbocharged 3 litre diesel with masses of low down torque and a smooth 8 speed automatic gearbox. The i3 feels much the same, only pick-up is more instantaneous and even smoother. Up until about 60mph the i3 is more refined than my 5 Series but after that the wind noise becomes increasingly noticeable. It also feels as light and agile as my old 2006 Mini One. The steering is quick, very direct with a black cab challenging turning circle. It’s not perfect though, as it lacks feel. It does exactly what you ask of it with precision, but it does not let on what the front tyres are doing as much as I’d like. The handling is good, albeit with quite a bit of roll. All the weight is low down in the car though, so it is much more planted than its narrow and high looks suggest. That ratio does mean that it gets unsettled in crosswinds at speed. I imagine the extra few centimetres of track and aero bits on the i3S would be a help here. It works best to be smooth with your inputs and pick your line well - let the mass settle into the corner. The big, but skinny wheels are there for aero not ride and the I3 is not overly fond of potholes or sleeping policemen. Overall, it is a genuinely nice car to drive. It will bowl along at motorway speed with just a wind rustle from the A pillars or do a decent hot hatch impression if you decide to burn some KWhs.

Ahh yes, range. Did I have range anxiety? Yes, from the moment the Sixt booking completed to the moment I checked them the keys back. Remember, I am a complete EV newb with a car at home that does over 600 miles on a full tank from the black pump. I was doing my little experiment in a foreign country that speaks Spanish - just like I don’t! The first thing to get used to is that the range variation you will see is pretty big compared to a conventional vehicle. The algorithm is more responsive to changes in driving style and environment. Use the sat nav and it will start to factor in road speeds and altitude change. On our first drive, we set off from Palma Airport and managed to increase our range by 20 Km at our destination despite it being 65Km away. On a different day we had to curtail a trip to some of the towns in the hills of eastern Mallorca due to dire range predictions due to the increase in altitude. The sat nav was less able to predict the positive effect on range of going downhill though. Mallorca is not a big place, but we were very active, and we managed to clock up over 1100km which is twice than the island’s coastline. Providing you have access to a charger, the i3’s range is fine here even for heavy use. My sums and the trip computers display both come out about 14KW per 100Km giving a real world 300Km range. I did drive with energy consumption in mind though. I am not talking about hypermiling here, just being smooth and not hurrying when I didn’t need to. If you have a lead foot or are impatient (or Mallorcan) then you will probably see that rise to 16-18Kw per 100Km. The total cost of energy was just €10 and we saved a whole heap of time look for parking. It would have cost us about €100 in a conventional car of the same size. Size is something to consider carefully when hiring in Mallorca. There is a lot of choice of cars on the island including the trinity of American muscle cars and SUV’s of every flavour. Our experience is that a navigation error or some over enthusiastic energy saving from the sat nav can land you in some distinctly Mallorcan tight spaces. Keep it narrow is our recommendation. On the subject of “distinctly Mallorcan” be aware that the island is multi-lingual. As well as Spanish, there is also the island dialect of Catalan called Mallorquín. It sometimes took multiple attempts in the sat nav to figure out whether it should be Pollensa or Pollença, Playa or Platges etc.

Tall and narrow works well in the narrow streets of Mallorca’s historic towns.

Here we come to the second part of the range issue - infrastructure. The Mallorca authorities are very keen to promote EV use. As well as sponsoring a network of free chargers (yup, I did say free) they also allow EVs to park in the blue painted disabled spaces (very handy if you don’t suffer a lot from guilt). We found the Electromaps app was much more up to date than the sat nav. You find chargers in car parks, street side and at some attractions. Despite this governmental enthusiasm, they have not been hugely successful yet, as we rarely saw the charger spaces occupied. The downside might have something to do with quite a number of the free chargers not being operational. The Electromaps app does give some indication of this and relies on its user community to keep things up to date. Unfortunately (for me) the app is in Spanish. This is also the case for the instructions for every charger I used. It is in Spain after all. However, car park ticket machines usually offered multi-lingual support and it would be nice to see that on chargers too. Keep Google Translate open on your phone! This reliability issue saps confidence for longer journeys or where you are not starting from full charge. With more experience, you could probably reduce your contingency - but that’s not really an option on a short rental. I never wanted to push my luck.

Sixt supplies the cars with a key fob which activates most chargers. If you find a private charger, you may need to pay to get access. Most chargers offer 2KW AC or 7KW AC outputs. This is the kind of output you’d get from domestic chargers. If they max out at 7Km, that is about 50Km per hour added for the i3, but it is more typically about 30Km. The best charger I found was a private one belonging to a neighbouring hotel at 22KW. In a slightly bizarre turn of events, their charger refused to let go of my cable after one charge. They let me charge for free (instead of €5 per charge) while they tried to get someone who could release it. I was very glad this was only 5 mins walk away not the other side of the island. Be warned, Sixt do not have spare cables! The resolution of this problem is a story in its own right. Suffice it to say that Sixt and the hotel did everything they could to resolve it and it didn’t impinge too much on our plans. I think it was a freak event so I don’t want to dwell on it too much.

Overall, I regarded the experiment as a success for our needs. I will probably buy an EV as a result in the near future and an i3 is on the short-list. If you are EV-curious I would encourage you to try it too. If you only need a car to get you from the airport to the hotel and back and a few local shopping trips, you may get by without charging at all. If you want to travel more widely then be prepared to spend some of your holiday planning how and when to charge. Bookmarking Google Translate is probably a wise move too! If you are a technophobe or a party of more than two, then the i3 is probably not the right choice. This will change in time as more EVs appear in the rental fleets with longer range and more space. Right now, it still doesn’t feel mainstream - there is still more than a whiff of science project about it.