Floor mats

I was going to give you something for the long holiday weekend — maybe an independence-themed Merrimac short or an (overdue) installment on Merrimac #1. Maybe a fresh 24k machine, though I am rapidly running out of those. Instead, I cleaned the floor mats of my car.

My car is a 2014 BMW i3. The i3 was one of the quirkiest of the recent electric cars (my review from 2014 is somehow still available). In the last ten years and hundred thousand miles, I replaced the windshield twice, replaced the tires two or three times each, had a repair done under warranty, and had a repair done out of warranty. It has been asking for maintenance, for whatever the electric version of an oil change is, for about the last two years. It may actually be an oil change. My i3 was built with an optional gasoline-powered backup generator that uses a 650cc two-cylinder motor sourced from a BMW scooter. Buried somewhere is a gasoline tank that holds a couple of gallons.

I like the car a lot. I like the idea of it even more — a small, plastic, electric city car with one-pedal driving? Amazing. I don’t like washing it. I don’t even like the idea of washing it. Car washing is something that the dealer does. Maybe I will drive through an automatic a couple of times a year if the roads have been salted recently. It turns out that I have gone about a decade without taking the silicone floor mats out and cleaning them. Ten years is probably a bit too long to go. The electric drive train has probably saved me a dozen oil changes over that time, an inconsequential time savings compared to the time savings from not pumping gas. Still, the idea that the car is no-maintenance isn’t the case and probably isn’t helpful in the long term.

Anyhow, the mats were clean today when I pulled into the dealership for a two-year-overdue service, two new front tires (with an embedded nail each), and a report that the car had left me stranded on the side of the highway this morning after nearly stranding me several other times without explanation.

I carry no tools in the car beyond my cellphone, an ice scraper, and sometimes a tire inflator. It’s hard to even imagine which ten manly tools I could carry that were likely to be of any use if my journey were interrupted. With my ‘77 X1/9, I knew exactly which 50 tools I would carry. I carried those and a dozen other for good measure. Another dozen ‘spare’ parts that might or might not be in better shape than the ones installed on the car.

The“no tools way is better. Even today.

So there I am, stopped on the side of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, with a car that has gas but will not start. First thought: my Prius has never ever in a quarter million miles failed to start its engine and transition to gas power. Ok, if unhelpful for right-now-me. Second thought: There’s no way to force the gas motor on as a driver. Hmm. Third thought: There must be a way to turn it on for a state emissions check without using BMW tools or software.

Indeed there was. Turn the vehicle off, open the rear hatch (a delicate operation on the side of a busy highway), press the power button, then the accelerator, then the brake in just the right sequence, and emissions testing mode appears. Thanks, Google! The gas engine runs for up to 20 minutes and dumps the electricity generated as a result into the battery.

After five minutes of this, the car started up normally and I was able to make it to a dealer without further complication. We’ll see what they say.

I’ll say this: Rolling into the dealership with clean floor mats is like being loaded into an ambulance wearing clean underwear. You mother was right. One less thing to worry about on a busy day.

I think the problem is complex. First, I think there is a technical problem with the battery. I think the tail of the calibration curve no longer reflects the state of the battery and that it can now slip from from reading too full to start the engine to too empty to start the engine. This is BMW’s fault. A second problem is that it acts this way at all. This is California’s fault.

The BMW has a small battery by EV standards. Rather than add hundreds of additional pounds so that you could drive around and feel uncomfortable with a battery gas gauge less than a quarter full, they tucked a lightweight generator and motorcycle motor in the rear. Unlike most hybrids, this motor cannot drive the wheels directly. Its real purpose is to let you use the whole range of the electric battery and catch you if you go a little further than that. It’s a safety net, not more trapeze.

In its very finite wisdom, California used its power over road and air to redefine an electric vehicle as high occupancy even with only a single occupant. Is a lightweight electric vehicle in which you can use the whole battery an electric vehicle in the eyes of California? No. That would be a hybrid vehicle, a kind of vehicle previously known to the state of California to be virtuous. You know what they say, though, too much virtue is … no, wait, they say sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. California put a price on access to HOV and pegged it to a deflationary technology. Probably somebody used a Prius to tow their Hummer down the HOV lane before California drew a new line higher up the beach for EVs only. In their eyes, the European i3 is merely a hybrid. Instead, California created administratively a new class of vehicles. These were range-extended electric vehicles. What’s the difference?

Well, a range-extended vehicle can’t have a gas range longer than its electric range. The US i3, therefore, had about a quarter of its gas tank removed in software, a bonkers idea. Also, a range-extended vehicle can’t turn on its range extender until absolutely necessary. In a BMW i3 in any other country, I could choose when to engage the gas motor and do it in a spot where a failure left me enough electric range to at least get to some safe harbor. Why did BMW pander to California in this way? Because access to HOV lanes is what sold half of these cars in the first place.

Software taketh, but it giveth also. Built-in maintenance software got me out of a jam today. I will use some sketchy software to speak to the i3 through its diagnostic port and convert the car to European mode as soon as I get it back from the dealer. Maybe I’ll keep the floor mats a little cleaner as well.