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| The odometer rolled past 5k about seven weeks after I took delivery |
Strengths:
Pre-conditioning. I love preconditioning! The MINI-E was desperately lacking this feature. I work long hours and my car is outside in a parking lot all day. I drive home late at night when the restaurant closes, and during the winter months, my car is usually a frozen brick when I get in it. The MINI-E would take about a half hour to get the cabin comfortably warm under these conditions, and would use a lot of energy from the battery to do so. With the ActiveE, I simply set the pre-conditioning feature to turn on about a half hour before I leave, and when I get in the car it's toasty warm inside AND the battery is warm which helps to extend the car's range. Honestly after having this feature, I couldn't ever buy another EV that doesn't have the ability to pre-condition.
Eco-Pro mode. I find myself driving in Eco Pro mode just about all of the time now. If I need a quick burst of power, I just deactivate it for the time being and then reactivate it. It extends the car's range by about 10-15% and in my opinion it doesn't compromise the car's fun to drive factor as there is still plenty of power. There are two things that need to be *fixed* about Eco Pro though, see them later under "weaknesses".
It's a BMW. I'm not all into the status of driving a luxury brand so that's not what I'm talking about. Maybe years ago that meant something to me, but it doesn't anymore. I really don't care if it says BMW or Kia on the hood. I'm interested in how the car drives, how comfortable it is, how efficient it is, and the level of quality that went into building it. BMW has a reputation of delivering on all of these qualities and this being my first BMW, I'm not at all disappointed. It's pretty much what I would expect from a luxury brand, everything feels top notch. It really feels rock solid, something my wife still talks about every time she drives it. It's extremely quiet inside, even for an electric car and that's saying a lot. The fit and finish of the interior is great, the seats are very comfortable and the BMW Connect drive offers useful amenities.
Weaknesses
It's heavy! The ActiveE, being a converted internal combustion engine car is really heavy. That's partially because BMW needed to add a lot of steel to reinforce the frame to retain its crash-worthiness. When you remove the car's gas engine it weakens the car because the engine is this huge mass of metal that will absorb energy in the case of a front end impact. Plus, the three battery blocks needed to be protected so there is more steel reinforcement. Then add the weight of the 32kWh battery pack and this small coupe is suddenly 4,000lbs! That's just too heavy for a car of this size and the efficiency suffers from it. Having to lug around 4,000lbs plus passengers gets the better of the car and so far I'm averaging about 3.1 miles per kWh used. Plus, when you push the car hard in corners, you can feel the weight - and not in a good way. On the flip side when you aren't driving it hard, the weight makes it feel incredibly stable and rock-solid. Because of this feeling I've called it an "electronic tank". When the i3 comes out late next year, I expect it to be at the top of the efficiency chart when compared to other EV's. It will weigh about 1,250 lbs less than the ActiveE and have the same motor and electronics. This should help to boost its consumption to around 5 miles per kWh.
Electronic glitches. Since the car launched there have been two electronic glitches that the ActiveE drivers have had to deal with. I know BMW is working on a solution, but for some it's not coming fast enough. I have been lucky and have not had a disabled car stuck on the road that needed to be towed to safety. Others, however, haven't been as lucky. The two problems are very similar. One is the 'transmission malfunction' error and the other is the 'drivetrain malfunction' error. The vast majority of the time when you see either of these error massages, the car will continue to drive and the message will simply go away. On some occasions, if your car is stopped when you get the message or if you are slowing down for a streetlight or stop sign, and you are just about to stop, the car message will display and the car will power down. Again, the vast majority of times you can just remove the key, wait a couple seconds and then restart the car and continue, but some times this doesn't work and you are stuck. I know BMW is working on these issues and hopefully we will see a solution very shortly. It would appear to me this is just a software issue and that there really isn't anything wrong with the car, it's just some kind of sensor is sensing a problem that doesn't exist. I say this because the car drives fine while this is happening and even if it shuts off, when you restart it it performs perfectly. The ActiveE is a small pilot program and issues are expected. We had our fair share of them in the MINI-E program and after a rocky start BMW corrected the issues and we were able to have many months of great, trouble free driving. I suspect the same will happen here. Once the BMW engineers figure out what is causing these issues and they develop a software patch we'll put this behind us. I just feel bad for some of the participants that have had problems with this right form day 1. They haven't been able to drive the car nearly as much as I have and get to enjoy it for what it is; a great electric vehicle. 
Overall the car has been pretty much everything I had hoped it would be. It's fun to drive, very comfortable and I can charge it with the sunlight that reigns down on my roof. What's gas cost these days anyway? I couldn't care less!
