ActiveE
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BMW, Bosch, and Swedish utility Vattenfall will collaborate on a project to use electric-car batteries for energy storage.
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BMW ActiveE Safety Recall For Possible Power Steering Failure
BMW is recalling its ActiveE electric cars to replace a potentially faulty component whose failure could leave drivers without power steering. According to the text of the recall, "variations in electrical current" may occur within the electric power steering, leading to a sudden loss of the power...
John Voelcker -
BMW ActiveE First Drive: At The Wheel (Video)
Yesterday we reviewed the BMW ActiveE electric car after spending an afternoon in the first ActiveE delivered in the U.S. Now, we have a brief video clip to take you inside the car, hitting some of the high points of the driving experience. The clip starts with the car at rest in the remarkably...
John Voelcker -
BMW ActiveE Electric Car First Drive: What's It Really Like?
The first BMW ActiveE electric car in North America was just delivered last Friday. Now, with only 600 miles on that car, we've driven it. Our first impressions of BMW's final electric test car, converted from a standard BMW 1-Series two-door sedan, are favorable. It's solid, comfortable, performs...
John Voelcker -
BMW Delivers First of 700 ActiveE Electric Cars In New Jersey
Regular readers may recognize the name of Tom Moloughney, who has written several stories on his experiences living with a Mini E electric car for two years. Now Moloughney has moved up in the electric-car world. On Friday, he was the first U.S. customer to take delivery of a BMW ActiveE, the first...
John Voelcker -
First Drive: BMW ActiveE Electric Car Prototype
A couple of weeks ago, BMW invited me to come to Munich and take part in the first drive of production versions of the BMW ActiveE, their second battery electric test vehicle. A bit of background: I've been something of a high-profile MINI E pioneers, maintaining an active blog about my...
Tom Moloughney -
Over the years automakers have used a huge array of techniques to entice members of the public to become test drivers in their electric car test programs. Often however, high lease fees combined with the requirement that lesses give back the prototype or limited run electric car at the end of the program put people off taking part. But now BMW has innovative, if slightly cringeworthy way of enticing people to take part in its BMW Active E electric car test fleet. It wants to call the lessees Electronauts. And to attract a base of potential Electronauts to lease 700 of its BMW Active E...
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BMW's UK MINI E Test Ends: Drivers Happy, But...
A few months after BMW and MINI's electric car study ended in the United States, a similar scheme run in the U.K. has also come to a close, and the results are in... ...and if you've read the results of the American tests, the figures coming from the U.K. will all look very familiar. Basically, all...
Antony Ingram -
BMW ActiveE Electric Car Shown On Leipzig Assembly Line (Video)
You might call it pure propaganda, but confident young BMW worker Mirco Schwarze describes the process of assembling the BMW ActiveE electric car in a way that makes it all quite palatable. The short video below, barely longer than a minute, shows the BMW 1-Series assembly line at the carmaker's...
John Voelcker -
BMW To Provide 4,000 Cars For 2012 Olympics, Electric Cars Included
The 2012 Olympics to be held next summer in London may be the greenest yet, with spectators and many participants moving by mass transit among the various venues. Still, automotive partner BMW plans to provide up to 4,000 vehicles for use during the events. Now we learn that 200 of those will be...
John Voelcker -
Are You Electric Car Ready? BMW’s New App Helps You Decide
You may recall earlier this year we wrote about an iPhone app designed to help prospective electric car buyers figure out just how big a battery pack their new electric car should have. Allowing full customization of technical parameters such as drag coefficient and vehicle weight, iEV was also a...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
BMW ActiveE Lease Price: $499 A Month For Electric 4-Seater
The choices among electric cars just keep getting better, as BMW has now announced the lease details for the first stage of its evolution into BMW-branded electric cars. The ActiveE, an all-electric version of the 1-series, will be available for lease requests later this summer. It will be offered...
George Parrott -
Electric cars, at the moment, cost more to buy than gasoline cars of similar size and with similar features, powertrain excepted. Leases on electric cars from mass-market brands like Nissan and Chevrolet are often a little more competitive. The 2011 Nissan Leaf is $349 a month, the 2011 Chevy Volt $350 per month (both prices are after a $7,500 Federal income-tax credit). But befitting its brand, BMW isn't exactly bestowing bargain-basement prices on its electric-car lease: It'll cost you $499 per month on a 24-month lease, after a $2,250 down payment. Reservations for the car begin this...
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BMW Releases More Details, Photos Of ActiveE Electric Car
The BMW ActiveE, first unveiled at the 2010 Detroit Auto Show, is BMW's second attempt at an all-electric vehicle. It follows the not-very-pleasant Mini E, of which 600 examples were tested in the U.S. and Europe during 2009 and 2010. Ahead of the upcoming Geneva Motor Show, BMW has now released...
John Voelcker -
BMW Green: Plug-In Hybrid Sports Coupe, MegaCity Plant OKed
BMW is moving full steam ahead with its plans to offer new, radically more fuel efficient vehicles in the next decade. Today, the company said it would put its striking Vision EfficientDynamics concept car into production, to be offered for sale starting in October 2013. And, it signed off on an...
John Voelcker -
BMW Announces ActiveE Testing For Key Markets, Starts Summer 2011
As BMW bring to an end the first round of BMW Mini E lease schemes in the U.K, drivers in New York, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Sacramento, Boston and Connecticut can look forward to signing up to help BMW test its ActiveE, two years before its MegaCity EV hits the market. Based on a...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
BMW's New Hydrogen Hybrid Mini: Hydrogen, Huh? Oh, REALLY?
Perhaps we're a little cranky this morning, still being on Greenwich Mean Time while the clock says Eastern Daylight. Or maybe we're just cynical. But could everyone please take a deep breath and consider reality before getting all hot and bothered over news that BMW seems to be working on a...
John Voelcker -
BMW MegaCity Urban Electric Car To Be Built of Carbon Fiber
We don't know what it looks like yet, but another detail emerged yesterday on BMW's upcoming tiny MegaCity urban electric vehicle: It will be built out of carbon fiber that is partly made in the U.S. BMW will partner with composites expert SGL Group to construct a new plant in Moses Lake...
John Voelcker -
BMW has now produced two electric cars: the two-seat Mini E, of which 600 examples are on test in the U.S., Europe, and U.K., and the new ActiveE Concept unveiled at last month's Detroit Auto Show, which will be similarly tested starting next year. But these are just preludes. The company will launch an all-electric vehicle sometime "during the first half of this decade," BMW said. That will be its first-ever full production vehicle to run solely on electricity stored in a battery. In other words, not an engine in sight (though for markets outside the U.S., a small and ultra-efficient...