For some families, owning more than one car is nothing special. However, most households usually have only one auto to rely on and to buy a new one is a tough decision, especially in today’s economy and global climate situations.
Some of us actually want to make a change and we really want to drive an electric car, not only to save the planet but also to save some money. That being said, cars like the i3 and the Tesla Model S do seem perfect at first, right?
They will get you to work and grocery shopping without releasing a single drop of CO2 into the atmosphere or forcing you to refuel at a petrol station. The one big flaw they have though is their biggest advantage as well: electricity.
Unlike conventional cars that can just be refilled in 5 minutes, electric cars take considerably longer to recharge. And it’s not just the time you spend recharging but also the fact that there aren’t nearly as many charging stations available as there are petrol stations.
Sure, you’ll hear the big car makers saying that those problems have been solved in more or fewer cases but the truth of the matter is, there is a huge amount of problems that can arise next to that, leaving you without any juice in your battery.
That’s exactly what Mat Watson learned when he tried to travel from London to Amsterdam using a BMW i3. One of the issues that gave him the biggest headaches was that the card he got for charging his car wasn’t working. Baffled by that, he called the company that issued it when he reached the capital of the Netherlands and found that it was their fault after all.
The card wasn’t authorized to work outside the UK and our good man couldn’t charge his BMW on multiple occasions because of this. While at petrol stations you could just use credit cards or cash to refuel your car, for some reasons the companies that operate charging stations for EVs are still using proprietary cards that may or may not work.
Luckily for him he had a range extended i3 at his disposal and that means he could just stop by a gas station, get petrol for the 2-cylinder scooter engine in the back and use it to generate electricity for the electric motor. That saved him on more than one occasion.
And that’s also why the range-extended BMW i3 is the best EV in the world right now. When you want to go around town in full EV mode, you can easily do so while going out of town for longer trips can be done on the back of the range extender with ease.
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