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car review

Sometimes, you just want to get in a car and drive. No worries about fuel, or reliability, or which electronic drive mode you prefer – you just need to get somewhere, and any car will do.

I needed to drive from Toronto to a funeral service in Ottawa, and it didn’t matter if the car was big or small or old or new. It just had to be a car, and not too fussy.

The BMW i3 is not such a car. In fact, it’s the antithesis of simple transportation. It’s very fussy, indeed.

Photos by Mark Richardson

Of course, it’s actually a nice little car. It’s a hipster’s car, really, if hipsters drive premium vehicles, and is friendly to the environment. The wood finish on the “Lodge” trim of my $61,845 tester was eucalyptus, quickly renewable and grown close to the Leipzig, Germany, assembly plant, which is, in turn, powered by wind turbines. Yeah, yeah – I just had to get to Ottawa.

But there’s more: The Carum leather of the door panels and seat edging is treated at the tannery with olive oil, not harsh chemicals. The carbon fibre of its superlight frame is spun in Washington State in a plant that’s powered by the local dam. Okay, nice, but will it get me to Ottawa? I have to be there before noon.

And that’s where the i3 may or may not have a problem. It’s an electric car, driven entirely by a 33 kilowatt-hour battery that has a realistic range of about 150 kilometres if you’re in a hurry. This is the new 2017 model – so brand-new that this generation only just debuted at the Paris Motor Show – and its updated battery will take you half as far again as last year’s model without being any larger in physical size. Like computers, everyone is counting on battery technology for electric cars to improve by leaps and bounds, and nobody’s yet been disappointed.

Related video: Why you aren't buying a hybrid

Fortunately, the tester was also equipped with the “range extender,” a $4,500 option that at least 80 per cent of i3 buyers choose. It’s a 650cc two-cylinder engine that hides in the back and can charge the battery’s generator when the juice runs low. It’s meant as a boost, not a substitute, so it only has a small nine-litre gas tank. Even so, this is also half as large in capacity as last year’s model.

Whatever. My wife and I needed to be in Ottawa before noon, so we jumped in the i3 and set off along Highway 401.

Most plug-in hybrids, such as the Chevrolet Volt and Prius, will let you choose whether you want to drive on electric mode or gas mode. Some fancy ones, such as the Porsche Cayenne or Mercedes S550e, will even let you recharge the battery by running the gas engine. The i3, however, is classified as a fully electric car and forces you to drain the battery completely before letting the range extender cut in. This keeps California legislators happy, apparently. It also helps the car qualify for the maximum Ontario subsidy of $13,000 – the most generous government program in North America.

So we drove along the 401 for more than an hour, keeping up with the traffic and thinking of our deceased friend, not the car. The i3 ran well and silently until the battery drained and the little gas engine kicked in to charge the electric motor. Our range now was just more than 100 kilometres. Most drivers look for a gas station at this point, but we were running with a full tank of fuel.

The i3 is a clever little car. Its range readout is precise to the last kilometre. Its navigation screen (part of an optional $3,000 package) will show you on a map exactly where you can reach, and will also show you fast-charging stations and gas stops along the way. The car’s power drops when it’s running low and it starts to notice hills and headwinds.

The rest of our drive was made with the range extender running – there was no time to recharge, even at a fast-charger – and any speed greater than 105 kilometres an hour effectively killed the air conditioner and the throttle response. It would go faster on the flat, but at the cost of the A/C. We would pull into gas stations with fewer than 10 kilometres of range left. There was no point in filling up any sooner with another $5 of gas.

We made it, and on time. Most i3 owners have no such problems – they use their cars in the city and recharge them nightly. If you need to, as we proved, you can make the longer trip at a pinch. Just don’t do it too often, or you’re missing the point.