BMW – Page 3 – My ActiveE Made Me Accidentally Environmental

BMWi World Tour – New York City Stop – 42nd and 6th Avenue, Across from Bryant Park – The second floor

So, the first floor of the New York stop of the BMWi focused on the upcoming i3 and i8 Spyder, the second floor was more lounge and other types of experience.

My wife and I met Karim, a nice young guy fom the BMWi team who was quite personable and was on his first trip to New York City. Aside from the pleasant company, the lounge in the second floor provided a section on non-BMW products that they identified as “Good Goods” by designers and businesses that have developed sustainable products for use. Such as wood jewelry, urban gardening, designer headphones made from fully recycled metals, and large wood ceiling fans. All of these things promote more Eco-Friendly products.

Additionally, there was an art installation entitled the Red Paper Heart that is activated when the viewer inserts a finger in a slot and the installation begins a light show from that.

I took stils instead of video –

Initial state –

After I followed the instructions

All this eco-friendly design studio was tied to the BMWi Lab which is where the BMW designers seem to have tied in the entire thing to the design of the BMWi vehicle line.

Recyclable components are what is shown here –

Now, it just so happened that the morning that we flew in for the BMWi Born Electric Tour was part of the sustainability Hackathon that they were holding in the cafe section of the second floor and I had an interesting conversation with Charlie Oliver. Charlie was working with others to assist BMWi’s DriveNow carsharing service come up with a solution for inventory management and enticing users to plug the Active Es that they rented for the short-term so that the inventory is always available for use. She seemed to have a good grasp of the problem and I hope that she and her team were able to come up with some good ideas for DriveNow to solve this problem. Another problem that was related to this issue was also the management of the fleet so that it is more evenly dispersed throughout the Bay Area. It would seem that a good number of the fleet would end up at the same locations.

BMWi World Tour – New York City Stop – 42nd and 6th Avenue, Across from Bryant Park – Initial reactions and pictures

A picture is worth a 1,000 words…

This one is worth a whole lot more

Yes, that’s the BMW i8 Spyder Concept Plug in Hybrid. Apparently, it’s only rated for 22 miles electric. That’s the down side. The price, not yet released, but I’m sure it’s an arm and a leg and perhaps more.

So, I was a little bummed that I was invited to an event on Tuesday that I was unable to make, so I’m hoping that the LA Auto Show event will be just as awesome. So, stay tuned.

We got to the BMWi World Tour location on 42nd and 6th Avenue slightly around 10:20am this morning EST after having left the Lakers leading the Suns at the end of the 3rd Quarter on Friday to catch American Airlines 30 from LAX to JFK departing at 11:40 pm PST (2:40am EST) and arrived at JFK 8:05 am EST (5:05 am PST). Upon entry to the exhibit, we were greeted by the staff and Mark from New York accompanied us as we walked around the bottom floor and we talked i3, EVs, i8, and our specific experience as Electronuts (those that use foursquare, use your check in and get some coffee/cappuccino on the second floor.)

Mark was very engaged in the conversation and he did his job well, he asked many questions as it related to our ActiveE and I finally saw the i3.

Here is one of me with the i3.

Unfortunately, the better half just does not like hatchbacks and she wouldn’t mind the i8.

Here’s a picture of me with the i8.

Mark accompanied us around the ground floor and gave specs on the carbon fiber build and the fact that the i3 will have a 22kWh battery and yet have the same range as the ActiveE. My wife asked about additional range and Mark mentioned the Gas Range Extender.

According to Mark, the void to the right of and beside the electric motor is where the range extender will be expected to reside, so adding it should NOT take much space away from the i3.

Here’s a close up of the interior of the concept –

And here is the i3 concept with both doors open –

Mark had spent a good deal of time with us downstairs, and we proceeded to go upstairs for the coffee and the gallery space. As I’m going to need to rest a little from the red eye, I’ll cover the upstairs and our few minutes with Karim on a subsequent post.

In the meantime, here’s my flickr stream of this space.

Additionally, I forgot to check out this interactive wall that BMW created to “transform” 6th Avenue traffic into i series vehicles.

Lastly, even with as much caffeine as I tried to drink at the BMWi World Tour stop, I know I start to get loopy when I decide to ham it up on a photo booth they had set up.

Now to take a short nap and recharge.

Got car back earlier than a week… Sort of…

It looks like the permanent fix requires a back-ordered part and since I’ve stressed to my local BMW dealer my challenge to try to catch up to Tom Moloughney’s EXTREMELY CHALLENGING pace (really, 96 miles a day! Ugh) I got the car back this morning at -20 before next scheduled service (climbed to -60 by the time I got to the office). The countdown for service was not reset because I need to get back to them as soon as the part arrives.

So, I’m at 20,040 ish and waiting for the final fix for the Spline issue. The part is back-ordered and they let me go back on the road. Not sure if any of the software fixes are applied to take care of the GFCI issues with some public chargers and whether or not launch control was removed.

I’ll let you know once I get back from my weekend in New York where I intend to catch up to the BMWi World tour at Bryant Park this weekend. Too bad I couldn’t fly in for the Tuesday event for my fellow Electronuts!

At least with the car back, I’ll get to park at LAX for FREE!