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ActiveE: An All-Electric 1 Series Unveiled by BMW

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Tha’s what smart companies do: they take in their customers’ feedback and bring back something better. Apparently, BMW already knows this golden rule or otherwise it wouldn’t have relied on the drivers’ input when creating the ActiveE.

Ever since releasing the first electric Mini back in 2009, BMW has received complaints from customers driving the Mini E about how the back seat space is taken up by batteries, for example, or most importantly, how much less power you have in an electric car during winter. With the ActiveE, the trunk is still rather reduced, but other aspects are much improved.

The all-electric version of the BMW 1 series coupe can drive up to 100 miles on its lithium-ion batteries and has the back seat cleared. The vehicle relies on a technology already tested on other electric cars, namely liquid-cooled and heated batteries and special software whose role is to preheat or cool the cabin while the car is charging.

By the way, we see some progress in here as well: the car is charged in 3 to 5 hours using a standard 240 volt Level 2 station; and tha’s something, considering the 33 KW batteries the car is carrying under the floor.

To attract more buyers for electric cars, and why not for the BMW ActiveE, the company put together an application called BMW Evolve. While driving your own (petrol) car, you can run the application on your iPhone or Android smartphone to see if an electric vehicle could match your driving style. So you don’t have to do the thinking on your own, while showing you aspects about your driving style that you haven’t thought about before!

Note: I just searched for BMW Evolve on the Android market and it’s not there yet, but I guess it will be soon enough. Anybody try this on the iPhone?

[via ConsumerReports]

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