[guyinacar]

New thread, in case any other X5 xDrive40e owners care to post/debate best practices that differ from fossil-fuel X5 variants.

OF COURSE, you can drive the 40e just like any other X5, so let's stipulate that option right up front.

But, if so inclined, you can drive it a little more "hybridishly."

Just to get the ball rolling, then:

• Accelerate modestly in normal daily driving, unless you desire to accelerate rapidly (i.e., you want to pull away quickly). This is similar to using the "disable start/stop" button on a typical X5. In other words, don't floor it at every single red light (...but, hey, maybe blow past a Volt once in a while )

• Above ~1 MPH (?), light braking is regenerative, and regeneration is your friend. Unless you're being intentionally sporty (as above), look further down the road than you might otherwise, and "drag" the brake a long way when approaching red lights. Normally, we're all taught not to drag the brakes. Here, dragging is preferred. Hard braking uses the calipers hard, which just makes heat. Of course: brake as hard as the situation requires, for safety or sport.

• Both the departure time feature and the BMW smart phone app will use "shore power" to run A/C or heat electrically. So get in the habit of asking for remote climate control 10 minutes before you intend to unplug and drive. This increases range, fuel economy, and comfort.

• In very heavy stop/go, low-speed rush hour traffic, consider using "Max eDrive" "Eco Pro" and ACC (if equipped) together, with the ACC set at 20 MPH, its minimum. This has the effect of electric-only automatic follow, and is waaaay awesome! Much of your accordion-traffic-braking will be regenerative. Note: YOU MUST STILL PAY ATTENTION!

• Regeneration is a function of wheel speed over land, not tach RPMs. In other words, downshifting the (actual geared) transmission and rev'ing higher doesn't get you more regeneration. So drive normally if you want to recharge the battery (wasting more fuel) except in "Max eDrive" mode. Hitting the "Save Battery" mode gets you the most regeneration, even under light acceleration.

• Rock crawling uphill seems smoother with >10% battery. Plan ahead if you're driving to the hills/lake/camp/rocks. Keep a little juice in the battery.

• Plug in whenever the opportunity presents. It's almost always cheaper, and the car is more fun to drive with a full battery than a dead one. Oh, and the EV spots tend to be fantastic! First ones after handicapped, usually. :thumbup:

Having driven the Mt. Washington Auto Road in a hybrid, I recall that they hand you a special sheet of paper with hybrid-only best practices for the 40-minute descent. If you ride the brake in a normal car, you're likely to overheat the brakes, and possibly lose control on the way down. People have indeed been hurt and killed due to brake failure. So you have to come down in first gear, and some cars pull over to cool the rotors and pads. Police cars aren't allowed, because they often have first gear locked out. But in a hybrid, it's the opposite. You're actually encouraged to ride the "brake" (generator, really), because it just dumps into the battery. They also tell you to put the windows down and blast the heater out the window, because it turns your car into a big 'ol hair dryer, which acts as the sink for excess electricity regenerated on the way down.

Any other tips?

 

[th_kemp]

New thread, in case any other X5 xDrive40e owners care to post/debate best practices that differ from fossil-fuel X5 variants.

OF COURSE, you can drive the 40e just like any other X5, so let's stipulate that option right up front.

But, if so inclined, you can drive it a little more "hybridishly."

Just to get the ball rolling, then:

• Accelerate modestly in normal daily driving, unless you desire to accelerate rapidly (i.e., you want to pull away quickly). This is similar to using the "disable start/stop" button on a typical X5. In other words, don't floor it at every single red light (...but, hey, maybe blow past a Volt once in a while )

• Above ~1 MPH (?), light braking is regenerative, and regeneration is your friend. Unless you're being intentionally sporty (as above), look further down the road than you might otherwise, and "drag" the brake a long way when approaching red lights. Normally, we're all taught not to drag the brakes. Here, dragging is preferred. Hard braking uses the calipers hard, which just makes heat. Of course: brake as hard as the situation requires, for safety or sport.

• Both the departure time feature and the BMW smart phone app will use "shore power" to run A/C or heat electrically. So get in the habit of asking for remote climate control 10 minutes before you intend to unplug and drive. This increases range, fuel economy, and comfort.

• In very heavy stop/go, low-speed rush hour traffic, consider using "Max eDrive" "Eco Pro" and ACC (if equipped) together, with the ACC set at 20 MPH, its minimum. This has the effect of electric-only automatic follow, and is waaaay awesome! Much of your accordion-traffic-braking will be regenerative. Note: YOU MUST STILL PAY ATTENTION!

• Regeneration is a function of wheel speed over land, not tach RPMs. In other words, downshifting the (actual geared) transmission and rev'ing higher doesn't get you more regeneration. So drive normally if you want to recharge the battery (wasting more fuel) except in "Max eDrive" mode. Hitting the "Save Battery" mode gets you the most regeneration, even under light acceleration.

• Rock crawling uphill seems smoother with >10% battery. Plan ahead if you're driving to the hills/lake/camp/rocks. Keep a little juice in the battery.

• Plug in whenever the opportunity presents. It's almost always cheaper, and the car is more fun to drive with a full battery than a dead one. Oh, and the EV spots tend to be fantastic! First ones after handicapped, usually. :thumbup:

Having driven the Mt. Washington Auto Road in a hybrid, I recall that they hand you a special sheet of paper with hybrid-only best practices for the 40-minute descent. If you ride the brake in a normal car, you're likely to overheat the brakes, and possibly lose control on the way down. People have indeed been hurt and killed due to brake failure. So you have to come down in first gear, and some cars pull over to cool the rotors and pads. Police cars aren't allowed, because they often have first gear locked out. But in a hybrid, it's the opposite. You're actually encouraged to ride the "brake" (generator, really), because it just dumps into the battery. They also tell you to put the windows down and blast the heater out the window, because it turns your car into a big 'ol hair dryer, which acts as the sink for excess electricity regenerated on the way down.

Any other tips?

Debating between 35d and 40e. Your opinion?

 

[guyinacar]

Your opinion?

I'll PM you.

 

[Me530]

I am really intrigued by the 40e. I could do 90% of my driving in all electric mode. I wish it went a few more miles on battery and there were slightly more sporty suspension options. Maybe I will make a move on the next version.

 

[exophthalmos]

me too, debating between 40e vs. xDrive

 

[guyinacar]

Came up with a few more...

Cross-referencing my "spend electricity" comment here, rather than copying a whole thread:

http://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/showthread.php?p=9752890

I think that link is relevant for 40e unique best practices. I try to "land empty" in my garage when running errands. That maximizes mileage.

And I'll share publicly a few other comments I've sent folks in PMs. Other people may find these helpful, too:

• Don't think of the 40e as using 100hp of battery first, followed by 200hp of gasoline second. I wouldn't find either experience to be very gratifying in such a heavy car. It's a blend, always a blend. Think of it instead as having 300+ hp (and 300+ torque) on-tap when you select it, yet you'll probably only be using 50hp typically for most of each comfortable, confident, calm ride. This is similar to a diesel: you never rev the hell out of a diesel. Most of the time, a 35d sips diesel, and provides endless torque at low revs. You only hammer an oil burner when you want to.

• 
  A boating metaphor is helpful for people new to (or considering) the 40e. IMHO, you can choose to treat the 40e like a sailboat, and the diesel like a Boston Whaler. Trimming in the sails may or may not be "work" to you. That's personal preference. Is a daysailer as dead-simple as a Whaler skiff? Of course not. But it's more efficient, and screwing around with the seamanship (trimming sails, picking when to tack, etc.) it is half the fun. Akin to picking the right racing line on a automobile race track, you can try to "trim" the 40e optimally. Or you can just drive it in "Automatic" mode. Different strokes for different folks. That's why the button is there, right?

• Anyone wanting to take 40e for a test drive should make sure you demand that the dealer send you off with a full battery. Maybe call ahead? I'm hearing that a lot of dealers let people have test drives in the 40e, but then leave the car at like 3% afterwards. My guess is that they don't want to stop the "so how did you like it?" sales patter, to break it up with the 90-second trip to the EVSE (charger), during which the customer might walk away. So the battery is essentially dead for the next driver. Worse, a dead tester is actually trying to charge itself in motion (pushing 5,400 lbs with only the standard BMW 4-banger, and also trying to charge up). You won't get the full experience. You won't be able to do a meaningful bake-off with a battery at 3%. This isn't like taking a convertible for a test drive in the rain (i.e., you don't get to see a convertible's real strengths). No, testing a 40e with a 3% battery is like taking a convertible for a test drive in the rain with the top down (i.e., it actually seems far worse than the normal version). Don't do that.

• Not all houses in North America are truly 120v. There's actually a pretty big range. Check your home's voltage with a multimeter, and then get the appropriate Level 2 charger for your house. They're only about $500, and up to 5x as fast as the temporary charger that comes with the 40e. More importantly...

• Have a licensed electrician install the L2 EVSE safely. The EVSE itself is dead-simple nowadays. But installing it safely (meaning not overloading your breakers, not too much conduit fill, etc.) is a little more tricky, and far beyond the mandate of this thread.

• An electric vehicle decides how much power it draws. The EVSE is merely the safest plug to supply the juice, but most of them are relatively stupid. Unlike a gas pump, where the "brains" are in the pump (while your gas tank is basically a stupid container) an EVSE is the other way around. The "brains" are in the car, not the EVSE. So understand the three 120v charging options inside the 40e. Read these two columns of the Owner's Manual the day you take delivery, before you even plug into your garage! It's short and sweet. BMW buries this info, and your dealer's Service Advisors probably won't offer much guidance either. Don't slap your new 12A continuous load on a 1930s knob-and-tube garage. Take a hard look at page 210 (2016 version) of the Owner's Manual, where it discusses Charging Vehicle - Charge Current. and throttle down accordingly. You can pick a 120v charging rate in the car... and faster isn't necessarily better. The iDrive settings menu offers 120v "maximum" "reduced" and "low" options. The actual watts-behind-the-words varies by country, according to the Owner's Manual. My limited understanding of the US National Electric Code (NEC) suggests that an EVSE is a "continuous load." It matters. Why? Electricity in copper wires makes (resistive) heat. Don't believe me? Look inside your toaster. That's 120v 15A on small, small wires in your toaster. Less electricity draw (or larger wires) means less heat in your walls. So select a 120v charging option that makes sense for the wiring in your house if you're going to use the free - and excellent, BTW - 12A 120v ClipperCreek EVSE that comes in the trunk of a 40e, even for a day. Being a conservative fellow, the first thing I did was make sure my 40e wasn't at "Maximum." Even "Moderate" is about the same as a 10,000 BTU air conditioner, according to the A/C models at Home Depot's website. The 40e should be dealer-prepped at "low" by default, but who knows who fiddled with it. Maybe you did, during delivery, right? Better yet, have a licensed electrician install that L2 EVSE to code ASAP, which will be up to 5x faster anyway.:thumbup:

 

[guyinacar]

me too, debating between 40e vs. xDrive

The 40e is an xDrive. Four wheel drive, hill descent control, etc.

 

[guyinacar]

Thought of another one:

• There's some uniquely awesome, hybrid-specific data available, if you look underneath the electronic speedometer, and select a displayed metric via the button at the end of the blinker stalk. Honestly, some of this crap is useless and distracting.* Hybrid stuff is light blue, and is better than the BMW defaults. There's a battery percentage display, for example, and that is sublimely useful. It's simple, powerful, and accurate. It's way more granular than the five-pack of battery "slices" that shows in the other graphics, so I almost always drive with the percentage showing. There's also a mi/kWh display that updates at what seems to be 90 times per minute. This is 98% useless, but it's a metric that many electric cars offer, so BMW adds it too. I think it's meant to show "how far do I roll down the road for each of my twelve-cent kilowatt hours?" The problem is that it bounces around all over the place from positive to negative, and maxes out at 99.9% (infinite), as you go up and down hills, and pass people. So you can't really glean any useful insights from the precision. You can't possibly average it in your head. What it *WILL* tell you (better than the ECO PRO "battery needle" graphic" can) is whether you're positive or negative on the battery at a given moment, and roughly how much. For example, you can see the effects of dragging the "brakes" to a red light (discussed above) in real-time. And you can see the effects of passing.

* Useless and distracting example: a calendar icon, really? Like I'd suddenly need to have my car tell me today's date in the speedometer? Thank you Knight Industries 2000. :tsk: Obsolete. I think the average fuel economy and such really belong over in the modern trip computer, as well. That's for all X5's (and many BMWs) though. IMHO, some of the legacy stuff here is just pure clutter, and BMW should deprecate that which is not immediately actionable for the driver.

-----------------------------------------------------

Anyway, I think that's about it for me. Anybody else have 40e driving suggestions? :dunno:

 

[hochoco]

This is my first post to this forum but I had been lurking most of the time.
I have learned a lot from the information I read at Bimmerfest and saved a lot of money by frequenting the "Ask-A-BMW-Dealer" forum before I made the purchase. It made a lot of difference when you are an informed consumer.

I took delivery of my 2016 40e last week via PCD in Spartanburg, SC.
It was indeed a very wonderful experience which I will do again should the opportunity present itself. Immediately after getting the car, my wife and I took a 460-mile drive back to Fairfax, VA. For such a long distance trip, we are mostly on gas power (average speed is around 80 mph), during this break-in period I made sure that my RPM stayed below 3K. My consumption was about 26 mpg.

I'm posting here to thank those who shared their best practices and tips in driving the 40e. I hope to contribute as well once I get more experience in driving the car. By following the best practices and tips, I'm getting a good level of efficiency based on the data collected from "ConnectedDrive". I'm sharing the data from my commute this morning. My work is about 22.4 miles from my house. Based on the numbers, I'm getting between 16 to 17 miles from a full charge. However, this is only my second day of my commute. I'm sure I'll get more meaningful information as I collect more data and get more experience.

I also installed a JuiceBox Pro 40. It fully charges an empty battery in 2 hours and thirty minutes. This number is consistent ever since I got the car.

So far, I'm very happy with the car! Getting a high level of efficiency through different best practices and combination of driving modes and eDrive settings is part of the fun and challenge!

 

[guyinacar]

...and w/r/t not driving "hybridishly"

I suppose I should flesh out what I stipulated a few weeks ago. No, you don't have to drive a 40e "hybridishly" at all.

Just for giggles, I've been getting rather poor mileage this week by giving my right brain/hand/foot a bit of a workout. :thumbup: BMWs, it turns out, are pretty fast.

When I smack the shifter towards my knee, it operates as an "automanual" stick, like any modern BMW. I can wind it right up. There appears to be a little turbo lag in the gasoline engine off the line (as expected), but a dab of heel-toe wakes the gasser up, while the electric engine is laying down its low-end grunt. I'd assume that's what all the testers did, too, or they tested with 1-foot rollout. Together, they're potent. Note: my car does not have the start-stop override button, although there's a cutout for it. I assume that's true of all 40e variants.

Thus: Sport Mode + automanual stick + "Automatic" eDrive (the default) seems to be a pretty grunty combo once under steam, and it appears to try to keep the 40e's battery somewhere in the 50% range (for performance, rather than economy). I have the "Sport Displays" programmed into one of my 8 buttons, so torque and horsepower are displayed in real-time. It's not 100% clear what that is telling me though. Net HP? Net torque? Gasoline only? They don't go negative, so it's a little suspect. Were the gauges showing true net torque, presumably at least torque should be negative during downhill braking into corners, right?

I also don't know if this car gets the "Efficient Dynamics" approach inherently. In other words, I can't see if the A/C is being used - and 12v systems are being used - more aggressively when the 40e is not being asked to get all grunty from what my right foot is doing. I assume eDrive > "Efficient Dynamics" but can't find any easy way to prove that.

"Manual" isn't fully manual, from what I can tell. I don't know how much idiot-proofing our Teutonic friends have programmed in here, but I've been throwing a healthy level of idiocy at the powertrain, and it's pretty happy so far. I haven't let it truly redline on the tach, but nor does it seem to let the ZF hang out in a tall gear (as you coast to a stop, for example, like you might do in a real stick-shift). So there's clearly some computer-controlling happening. I'd call this influencing shift-points (and fuel economy), rather than really driving a stick.

Anybody know how to squeeze maximum performance from this car? Or what not to do?

 

[admranger]

I'm using 'reduced' charging for mine. Haven't tried full b/c I can't afford to trip the breaker (sprinkler system is on it -- I'll try in winter when one day w/o water doesn't kill my more sensitive plants).

The biggest benefit I get from saving the battery on the way to work and using it mostly on the last part of my 12 mile (uphill) commute home is a cool engine in the garage. A garage that's already north of 90+ degrees F.

Still less than 1000 miles. I'm on my second tank of gas. If the range gauge is accurate, I still have 225-250 miles of range left at just less than 1/2 tank.

 

[guyinacar]

The biggest benefit I get from saving the battery on the way to work and using it mostly on the last part of my 12 mile (uphill) commute home is a cool engine in the garage. A garage that's already north of 90+ degrees F.

Ha! Funny you should say that. Literally just yesterday, I snapped this picture in a parking lot:



It's 89°F outside (more in my garage). But after ~10 miles, my engine is still stone cold, and I still have 40% battery, which I'll use going uphill to my house. Note that I'm in "insane golf cart mode" here, scooting around town in "Sport" and "Max eDrive," with my A/C blasting away and my radio cranked up (but tach at zero). :bigpimp:

 

[admranger]

Note that I'm in "insane golf cart mode" here, scooting around town in "Sport" and "Max eDrive," with my A/C blasting away and my radio cranked up (but tach at zero). :bigpimp:

I have not tried that mode yet! Gotta give it a go! :bigpimp: indeed!

 

[xx]

Insane golf cart mode huh??!!

 

[X5_XPRESS]

Looking forward to joining the "golf cart' club - hopefully next week.

 

[X5_XPRESS]

Been driving Volts for the last 4.5 years (60K) miles and curious if I can use some hyper milling skills I learns to get me to work and home each day (19 miles) on one charge. The x5 seems to be a good compromise between an electric commuter car for me (19 miles to work) and something to take me to the mountains all year long. With six months left on the Volt lease and my daughter just getting her license (she gets the Volt) I need something electric with utility and the choices are limited for the foreseeable future.

I'm curious if you guys see the electric range increase when leaving a location with a full charge and then heading downhill because of regen. I see this often in my Volt when leaving the mountains heading home or even leaving my house as I live on a hill. I can 'game' the Volt to get over 45-50 miles of range when i start with 35 when heading downhill. I've even seen it go to 70 miles when starting with a full charge and descending from 4000 feet to 1500 feet. I sure wished the X5 would charge past 50% using the ICE and have faster plug-in charging. Those were my only two hesitations but I scored a great lease with my local dealer after finally finding a car with the specs I wanted. Hoping to take ownership next week.

 

[athanyel]

I sure wished the X5 would charge past 50% using the ICE and have faster plug-in charging.

Based upon my extended test drive (way back in January), I found the "the X5 won't recharge past 50%" bit to be somewhat misleading.

When placed in Save Battery mode, the X5 will intentionally charge the battery up to 50% and ensure that you have at least 50% battery. That does not mean that it will not recharge past 50% just that the system stops actively trying to do so. Any passive regeneration from braking or deceleration will put more charge back into the battery.

If the driving dynamics is set to Eco Pro or Comfort, you'll likely get a very little passive regeneration. If you put it in Sport mode...you'll get a lot more.

While I had the loaner, I put the 40e into save battery and the transmission into sport mode just to see how much I could recharge on one of my regular moderate trips on the weekend (around 10 miles). If I am remembering everything, I recharged the battery from 73% up to around 87%. The normal braking, letting up on the accelerator, and the harder braking for the off ramp all put power back into the battery while I was in sport mode.

 

[guyinacar]

I'm curious if you guys see the electric range increase when leaving a location with a full charge and then heading downhill because of regen.

Well, the traction battery doesn't get any more full than "full." With apologies to This is Spinal Tap, BMW X5's don't "go to 11," even rolling off a cliff...

You'd merely be changing the equation while you drive down a long hill to work, and you'd be "gaming" the estimate, as you say. And I generally take the 40e's range estimate with a huge grain of salt anyway. Let us know if the estimate increases with a long downhill run, and please post back here. IMHO, the most accurate metric - by far - in a 40e is the battery percentage in simple blue text. That is always right. Everything else is derivative of that and, IMHO, suspect.

I sure wished the X5 would charge past 50% using the ICE

As athanyel noted, a BMW eDrive WILL recharge above 50%, if forced. But it's not the same as the Prius/Lexus approach, because it's fundamentally pluggable. The goal (per my other thread) is to "land empty" in an 40e, Nissan Leaf, Tesla, etc. because they plug in at their destination by design. The goal is to "land full" in a Malibu Hybrid or a Camry Hybrid, because they want to leave on their next journey with enough juice. I haven't found much benefit to the active hypermiling techniques you'd use in, say, a Prius (e.g., pulse-and-glide)... to say nothing of my general dislike of the certain self-absorbed hypermilers who are oblivious to the dangers they're creating behind themselves in traffic. I doubt anybody in this BMW forum is 100% in that camp, frankly. I nearly rear-ended a pluggable Prius last week doing 35mph on I-95. That's both unsafe and illegal (here), and yet people do it. That said, you can "paddle" a 40e in and out of neutral, similar to the paddle in a Lexus; BMW's hybrid shifter is not as intuitive as the Toyota paddle (sorry folks!). But, then, it wasn't meant for that. I haven't found any benefit to toggling neutral vs MAX eDrive mode, frankly. Also, most ZF trannies have "dogs" that lock up in their most efficient position, not losing power to viscosity. I'm not sure if that's true on the 40e, since that's right where the e-motor sits. Nevertheless, simply driving pleasantly seems to wring the most mileage, from what I've seen so far.

I sure wished [40e's] have faster plug-in charging.

3.5kW isn't that slow. I charged last night at the mall to 85% while I shopped for 2 hours If I had my 'druthers, though, the X5 would have about a 14 gallon fuel tank, and I'd make the battery about 15% bigger with the saved weight. Then it'd be nice to charge at, say, 4.2kW, and get maybe 22 miles all-electric. A lot of the time, I feel like I'm carrying around a hundred pounds of gasoline for no good reason. When it's not towing, this car might actually have too much range. Go figure, right?

BTW, speaking of the mall, I charged for free at an EVgo port. It looks like the rules changed (for the better) three weeks ago:

https://www.nrgevgo.com/chargenow-by-evgo-terms-of-service/

My xDrive40e came with a free ChargePoint subscription, co-branded as BMW ChargeNow. The other dominant set of public EVSEs is owned by NRG, called EVgo. It looks like there's some kind of new marketing tie-up between ChargePoint and EVgo, where the BMW key fob establishes my identity for free in both national networks, enabling EVSE use on a pay-as-you-go basis. Of course, at many shopping malls, paid garages, and municipal lots, the "pay" rate is zero for some amount of time. It looks like ChargePoint/BMW/NRG are working through their "VHS/BetaMax" issue right now. Seems to be resolved, though I haven't heard much. I called EVgo Customer Service last night and I was told "yeah, we can enable you remotely, if needed... not all of the stations have been re-coded yet." I just had to put my ChargeNow info and BMW serial (last seven) into the EVgo website, and establish a payment method.

 

[X5_XPRESS]

Well, the traction battery doesn't get any more full than "full." With apologies to This is Spinal Tap, BMW X5's don't "go to 11," even rolling off a cliff...

You'd merely be changing the equation while you drive down a long hill to work, and you'd be "gaming" the estimate, as you say. And I generally take the 40e's range estimate with a huge grain of salt anyway. Let us know if the estimate increases with a long downhill run, and please post back here. IMHO, the most accurate metric - by far - in a 40e is the battery percentage in simple blue text. That is always right. Everything else is derivative of that and, IMHO, suspect.

As athanyel noted, a BMW eDrive WILL recharge above 50%, if forced. But it's not the same as the Prius/Lexus approach, because it's fundamentally pluggable. The goal (per my other thread) is to "land empty" in an 40e, Nissan Leaf, Tesla, etc. because they plug in at their destination by design. The goal is to "land full" in a Malibu Hybrid or a Camry Hybrid, because they want to leave on their next journey with enough juice. I haven't found much benefit to the active hypermiling techniques you'd use in, say, a Prius (e.g., pulse-and-glide)... to say nothing of my general dislike of the certain self-absorbed hypermilers who are oblivious to the dangers they're creating behind themselves in traffic. I doubt anybody in this BMW forum is 100% in that camp, frankly. I nearly rear-ended a pluggable Prius last week doing 35mph on I-95. That's both unsafe and illegal (here), and yet people do it. That said, you can "paddle" a 40e in and out of neutral, similar to the paddle in a Lexus; BMW's hybrid shifter is not as intuitive as the Toyota paddle (sorry folks!). But, then, it wasn't meant for that. I haven't found any benefit to toggling neutral vs MAX eDrive mode, frankly. Also, most ZF trannies have "dogs" that lock up in their most efficient position, not losing power to viscosity. I'm not sure if that's true on the 40e, since that's right where the e-motor sits. Nevertheless, simply driving pleasantly seems to wring the most mileage, from what I've seen so far.

3.5kW isn't that slow. I charged last night at the mall to 85% while I shopped for 2 hours If I had my 'druthers, though, the X5 would have about a 14 gallon fuel tank, and I'd make the battery about 15% bigger with the saved weight. Then it'd be nice to charge at, say, 4.2kW, and get maybe 22 miles all-electric. A lot of the time, I feel like I'm carrying around a hundred pounds of gasoline for no good reason. When it's not towing, this car might actually have too much range. Go figure, right?

BTW, speaking of the mall, I charged for free at an EVgo port. It looks like the rules changed (for the better) three weeks ago:

https://www.nrgevgo.com/chargenow-by-evgo-terms-of-service/

My xDrive40e came with a free ChargePoint subscription, co-branded as BMW ChargeNow. The other dominant set of public EVSEs is owned by NRG, called EVgo. It looks like there's some kind of new marketing tie-up between ChargePoint and EVgo, where the BMW key fob establishes my identity for free in both national networks, enabling EVSE use on a pay-as-you-go basis. Of course, at many shopping malls, paid garages, and municipal lots, the "pay" rate is zero for some amount of time. It looks like ChargePoint/BMW/NRG are working through their "VHS/BetaMax" issue right now. Seems to be resolved, though I haven't heard much. I called EVgo Customer Service last night and I was told "yeah, we can enable you remotely, if needed... not all of the stations have been re-coded yet." I just had to put my ChargeNow info and BMW serial (last seven) into the EVgo website, and establish a payment method.

Thanks for the info- I'll report back after I get the car.

As for the EVgo, the annual pass is $39 for and is limited to 2 hours Level 2 charging for as many charges you want in a year - is that correct? Does that mean that Chargepoint station charges are billed as normal? It would be great to have free Chargepoint access for a 2 hours at a time ....

 

[guyinacar]

Thanks for the info- I'll report back after I get the car.

As for the EVgo, the annual pass is $39 for and is limited to 2 hours Level 2 charging for as many charges you want in a year - is that correct? Does that mean that Chargepoint station charges are billed as normal? It would be great to have free Chargepoint access for a 2 hours at a time ....

Not the $39 version. Check out the other one in that press release, the "pay as you go" variant.

Keep in mind that 40e's can't use DC fast chargers, or at least the '16 version couldn't. I assume the '17 is the same. Nor would it be necessary, because of the gasoline 4-banger engine. For a Tesla, you're pretty much hosed without occasional access to a DC fast charger, at least for long trips.

So my read of that link is that the "pay as you go" model simply gives you authentication for L2 charging at NRG EVgo stations at $1.20 per hour (no annual fee, and subject to change). The grey area - which I'd love someone to clarify - is that many NRG EVgo branded stations are already free. For example, I have one in a mall near me. It's free. I'm assuming it doesn't automatically become $1.20 now, just because I've cross-linked my ChargePoint and NRG EVgo branded accounts... but you know what they say about assuming.

I can say as one factual data point that indeed I used an EVgo L2 station at 3.5kW last night, free.

Frankly, this seems to be plain 'ol good news. But I'll wait for others to chime in.