Jul 30th 2013, 10:16, by Robert S. Anthony, Melissa Riofrio
NEW YORK—Call it the revenge of the nerds. At a splashy debut on Monday, BMW rolled out the BMW i3, an electric car with enough Internet-connected amenities that the company bills it as the "world's first fully networked electrically powered car."
Robert S. AnthonyThe i3 is not like any BMW we've seen before. And we're not sure how we feel about that yet.
The i3 is impressively forward-looking in many ways. It also represents a radical—oh, let's just say it, dweeby—departure in styling and performance for this high-end automaker. It'll be interesting to see whether customers pick brains over beauty when the i3 goes on sale in 2014.
The i3 comes with its own cell-phone-like SIM card and can be managed with a smartphone app. Not only can the app tell you where the next charging station is, but it lets you know if someone's already using it—and if you have enough juice to make it there.
BMWThe BMW i3's smartphone app helps you manage the charging and other aspects of the car.
BMW took pains to point out that the i3, which will start at a base price of $41,350, is not an electric car squeezed into the shell of an existing gas-powered unit, but a vehicle designed from the drawing board up to be an electric car. For example, the i3's lithium ion batteries are distributed below the floor line, a design which adds stability and improves car handling, according to BMW. The 360-volt battery array provides the BMW i3 with a range of 81 to 99 miles of average driving, said BMW.
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