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Hey guys yes it’s winter time again in colorado and normally you may have expected me to do a cold start on a diesel pickup truck but no this is a winter test of an electric car this is a 2014 bmw i3 it’s our project car we recently purchased and it does have snow winter tires in this video i’m going to show you well exactly how it starts what it’s like to
Actually use an electric car in the winter in the middle of a snowstorm yes it is october but still we’re fortunate to get snow because we’ve had little moisture but let me show you the car come around so we purchased this car very recently it’s a 2014 like i said and we purchased it for about 12 500 bucks um yes it’s fully optioned um yes it used to be about
45 grand in 2014. um but look let’s look at the tires really quick these are bridgestone blizzak snow tires and in a second i’m going to turn them and show them to you but this car is very unique because these tires are very narrow that’s usually basically done for efficiency because this car doesn’t have a very big battery so you want to get every ounce of
Efficiency out of it but in the winter time regular tires would be almost useless on this car thankfully this car is has some half to it that’s important during the winter it’s about 27 to 2800 pounds and it’s rear wheel drive so i might be able to do some donuts today so let me turn the tire just stay here for just one second and let me show you yes it’s
Very cold it’s probably about 10 degrees fahrenheit but look at the tire come on closer uh yes it’s a very a good winter tire and it’s got all the sipes all right let’s get in the car and let’s warm up and actually start this vehicle okay okay thank you my daughter is helping me today so let’s get in okay all right let’s look okay put the key in here uh starting
On i3 um it’s kind of a unique experience because it’s a unique design but there’s a start button right here you’re supposed to put your hand i am right-handed push start it’ll tell me that it’s coming online okay now it says outside temperature can you see that 15 degrees although of course my house thermometer said it was lower the car is fully charged and
Let me actually see if the wipers will work let me hold this for you so it seems to be the car is happy so far they already feel the um actually the hvac system the blower is running of course it’s not very warm yet it’s set at 70 degrees and i may need to actually scrub the windshield uh here in a second uh yeah it’s it’s a actually this is a four-door car
Let me see so thankfully that’s working i didn’t have to scrape it too long this has heated seats this doesn’t have every option this is not a top of the line car from 2014 but let’s see i am going to set it to eco pro set it to drive using this shifter once again let’s go for a ride you know what this car feels kind of normal it’s very quiet it’s very
Silent of course let me do a little break test there i could feel the abs kick in but it stopped immediately i think the tires are doing their job although they’re very narrow but actually in snow being narrow helps because you can actually push through the snow uh maybe actually reach the ice below it and maybe actually reach the pavement below that so having
Narrow tires is not a bad thing i’m just running around my neighborhood here traction control came on it told me to kind of relax a little bit and i wasn’t actually using all my accelerator and i’ve heard this complaint many times about people talking about electric cars people say that electric cars are not very good in the winter on snow and ice because they
Have instant torque you can actually spin your tires very easily of course right now i’m using barely touching the throttle but i feel in total control and like i said this is a rear-wheel drive car sorry they’re speed bumps all right oh did you feel that found some ice okay let’s get to a parking lot and hopefully i’ll be able to show you how this car handles
From the from the outside as well it’s struggling a little bit traction control do you see that light blinking you see that light blinking right there that’s um the car is telling me something is not quite right well yes it is very slippery outside it’s been snowing most of the day but a lot of it has been melting in the morning but finally the cold set in and
It’s a true winter storm and i have a there i have a little kid running across the street okay so far so good let me see let me go into see if i have other modes other than eco pro and eco pro plus and normal vehicle settings vehicle status look at this so far tire pressures look okay when it gets cold actually i’ve noticed the pressures go lower and sometimes
I get a check uh tire pressure monitoring system uh light warning saying that i need to inflate my tires a little bit more and of course tires for this car can be a little bit more pricey because it’s a very unique rare size they’re very specific this is a 19 inch wheel on this particular i3 and by the way this is kind of a popular car too bmw sold according
To them about 200 000 of these as a few months ago and about 42 000 of these over the last five to six years in united states so this car is not ultra rare but it is still kind of unique in what it’s able to do it’s a four door kind of a clam shell door design four passenger vehicle and here i am i’m gonna turn on my lights make sure every light is on okay um
Camera lady can you get out and i’m gonna try to show how the car handles um on the from the outside there you go okay did you see that that was me totally flooring it i’m not able to fully defeat the traction control system but this car feels really fun actually because it’s rear-wheel drive the power is delivered right there but the batteries and the um
This has a range extender little gas motor to provide extra electricity that’s also in the back so there’s a lot of weight over the rear axle this car look feels really great let me do quite another roundabout and then i can close the video hold on well there you have it the car is working great it took actually it was pretty quick to warm up the windshield got
Heated up the seat warmers were on it was actually comfortable i felt pretty safe uh it was able to stop with these snow tires the snow is still coming maybe tomorrow or another day i can do another test for you uh in more detail and maybe do a little bit more driving to actually let you know exactly how this car feels when the weather gets wintry this is one
Of my favorite times thanks and go back to tflcar.com for all the latest news views and real world often snowy car reviews
Transcribed from video
The BMW i3 Is Not As Terrible As You'd Think In The Snow…But Can It Do Doughnuts? By TFLnow
