While driving in the city I spend most of my time in the Comfort or Eco Pro settings. Luckily, this has been balanced out with a lot of highway driving. I spend a lot of my time driving in stop and go traffic in our lovely DC metro area. It hurts my lease mileage but it’s good for my enthusiast’s soul. Couple this with being able to coast up to 100 MPH, it’s a pretty interesting system that gets my tech nerd self excited.Īll of this technology is really cool but what’s it like to drive the car on a regular basis? Well I’ve had the AH3 since December 2012 and fortunately (or unfortunately as the case maybe sometimes) I’ve put 18k miles on the car thus far. While for now this only happens at low speeds in the urban environments, BMW will be expanding this technology in the future. In conjunction with the Navigation system the AH3 is capable of “looking ahead” at the topography of the map an adjust it’s electric driving based on optimal use. The Comfort mode typically switches to gas power once you hit 30 MPH and the Sport mode drops right out of electric mode as soon as you blip the throttle. In fact, the 47 MPH in all-electric mode can only be achieved in Eco Pro. Eco Pro allows the car to spend most of its time in all-electric mode while you are driving. While the Sport buttons are awesome, in the AH3 the Eco Pro is arguably where it shines for those Eco enthusiasts. I guess BMW is just trying to make it easier for us all. Interestingly enough, even in a non-Sport or M Sport car you can achieve this but, there is an additional button press involved. This detracts from drifting and getting sideways which as we all know, is a big downer for those who like to drive a bit manic (in controlled conditions, obviously). DSC is designed to eliminate fish-tailing when there is reduced or no traction at the rear wheels. DSC is turned off and the Dynamic Traction Control is turned on while maintaining the Sport shift modes. Sport + mimics the Sport mode while also removing those pesky nanny controls known as Dynamic Stability Control and allowing you to drive the BMW as it is meant to be driven, sideways. In a Sport Line or M Sport equipped F30, they add Sport + mode which is the enthusiasts best friend. All of the cars have Eco Pro, Comfort and Sport modes which affect the steering feedback and throttle response of the vehicle. This tech comes with 3 – 4 different modes depending on which trim you choose. Like all new F30 (2012 and newer 3 series sedans) models the car comes standard with Driving Dynamic Control. The added power is certainly welcome when you consider the fact that the battery adds an additional 300 lbs to the weight of the vehicle when compared to it’s RWD brother.īMW packed in all sorts of cool technological advances into the car that really wow me when I think about it. But the real fun comes when you kick the car into sports mode, which gives the AH3 a full 335 HP and 330 lb/ft of torque, capable of 0 – 60 times in the low 5 seconds. Around the city it provides some pretty cool all electric driving to save on fuel economy, which I will discuss in depth below. The battery capacity isn’t fantastic but it does allow you to drive 2 miles up to 47 miles an hour in all electric mode. In the AH3, BMW integrated an electric motor capable of 55 HP with a Lithium-Ion battery that is located in the trunk. The base motor is what is referred to internally as the N55 3.0 liter inline six cylinders with Twin-Power Turbocharger that outputs 300 HP and 300 lb/ft of torque. Well, it kind of is when you ignore all of the interesting technical components that they added. The ActiveHybrid on the other hand might as well be a 335i. The i3 features a fully electric model and a model much like the Chevy Volt with a range extender. There’s has been a lot of talk about the i3 that BMW recently revealed but, the BMW hybrids are a horse of a different color. Suffice to say that the lease deal that BMW offered on the AH3 at the time was an offer I couldn’t refuse. Originally I was looking for another RWD, 6 speed, BMW Coupe but as luck would have it. In December of 2012 my poor 2007 MINI Cooper S was totaled and I was looking for another car to replace it with. All that being said, a BMW hybrid was the furthest thing from my mind. For those of you who are unsure what that means, there was not an all-electric mode. While it is important to note that the X6 was always a full-hybrid system, up until this past year, the 7 was a mild-hybrid. With the introduction of the new Hybrid models, BMW went from mild-hybrid to full-hybrid in the 3, 5, and 7 thanks to the Full Hybrid 2.0 power system which allows the cars to be driven in all-electric mode. Currently BMW offers the 3, 5, and 7 series in Hybrid and they removed the X6 in 2011, much to everyone’s delight.
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