BMW accused of misleading performance claims

As indicated in the following : http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/bmw-i3-electric-car-advertising-go-public-1.4097322
Apparently BMW changed the online advertised range from 200km to 160km after marketing the car.
This was when the i3 had the 22kWh battery not the 33kWh, If it were me I probably would have taken the $5.000 settlement and traded for a leaf.

From the artitle:

He did a lot of research before locking onto an $970/month, four-year lease for a new 2014 BMW i3

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Even talking about CAD rather than USD, that amount could have almost gotten him a Tesla!

jlv said:

From the artitle:

He did a lot of research before locking onto an $970/month, four-year lease for a new 2014 BMW i3

Click to expand...

Even talking about CAD rather than USD, that amount could have almost gotten him a Tesla!

Click to expand...

Yah. There is more to this than meets the eye. We were killing time at the Nissan dealer which is right beside the BMW dealer in our town. Prices for a new I3 were proportionately higher as per the exchange rate for the i3 from what we had seen in California. I have no idea how they came up with that number. Weird.

I am not surprised to see BMW accused of misleading advertising. I looked at the i3 when I was shopping to replace my 2011. The descriptive literature claimed 100-mile range and did not display battery capacity. The salesman could not tell me the battery capacity, but claimed to have driven over 90 miles on the freeway with climate control use and with some remaining range. I ruled out the i3 after confirming that its battery was smaller than the Leaf has. Both lease and purchase prices on i3 were very high (commensurate with Bring More Wallet) here in Arizona. I suspect BMW offers lower prices on the i3 in California because they need the CARB ZEV credits there. I like my BMW motorcycles, but the i3 was not suitable for my daily driver needs and it would have been difficult to justify the extra cost even if it had sufficient battery capacity.

On BMW's website, they list Coulombic capacity of their batteries to indicate which model (94 Ah versus 60 Ah). Of course this tells you NOTHING about the energy capacity of the battery, since they do not specify the voltage of the battery. You have to look at the specifications page to see an energy capacity listed (33 kWh). What's odd is that they list two different Coulombic capacities, but only ever indicate ONE energy capacity. I see no mention of 22 kWh on their website. Perhaps I am just missing it.

GerryAZ said:

I am not surprised to see BMW accused of misleading advertising.

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Nor I, but then I am hard pressed to think of a product sold in the US that *someone* has not leveled those charges.