Today's drive

Today's drive was not long, just to Burnley but I discovered something about the car... silence.

You would think that in the over two years I have had the car I would have experienced that before, but somehow today was different. I know the road well; it is fairly well but not newly surfaced. At the point I felt it, the road is a fast dual carriageway which goes uphill for about a mile. I realised there was almost no noise...

The only difference that might account for this, is that I have been experimenting with the regenerative braking settings. When I first got the car, I used specific levels of regeneration; either 1, 2 or 3. Then I moved onto Auto, again with three settings. I have tried iPedal but not sure I like it.

Then I read that for higher speed roads, the regeneration should be set to zero and that is what I did today. I wonder if that made a difference?

If you set regent to zero then when you lifted off it would coast. But I'm not sure I'd expect an electric motor going in reverse for region to make much noise. Maybe it does. Some cars now claim to be able to reclaim quite a few kW from the regeneration.

Did you get more miles per kW too? Because I'd have thought coasting is better than letting it brake a bit to slow you down.

There is certainly a zero regen position which I used. I have also tried putting the car into neutral, but not yesterday as there was too much traffic. I don't know if that would have helped the 'coasting' more than in zero.

I did my weekly 300-mile Auckland round robin trip again today. With WdB’s approbation fresh in my mind I managed to reduce the petrol consumption to 6.5l/100km, a saving of 2 litres of juice.

Yes it might be dinosaur motoring but it’s good dinosaur motoring.

Highlight of the day was seeing a bright red, immaculate 1990 BMW 318iS on the motorway. Someone’s pride and joy!

One of those never meet your heroes cars. A lad I carshared with in the 90s had an E46 318iS. It was that car that put me off BMWs. Lacklustre performance, crashing suspension and orange boxes for seats.

Back to EVs, they never really coast. If the motor is not consuming from the battery and driving the wheels then it is a generator driven by the wheels pushing charge back to the motor given the lack of clutch. With regen set to 0 my EV still pushes 2kW to the battery and it gets rid of the handbrake stuck on sensation.

One thing I struggle with is some of the stats presented in the app. Fur example, today the car has covered 25kms with an energy consumption of 2.57kWh.
I then get an average consumption of 10.30kWh/100kms which is close enough to the actual consumption figures ((2.57/25)*100) or 2.57*4 gives 10.28 rounded up.
It then shows a regen figure of 1.77kWh. What is that number ? Does it mean 3.34kWh has been pulled from the battery then 1.77kWh was not needed ? Does it mean >3.34kWh has been pulled and 1.77kWh is what it managed to recover (I suspect this is closer to the mark as energy is lost not made) ?

This leaves me questioning how much has been pulled from the battery ? 2.57kWh has been used, 1.77kWh has been returned, what was the total amount taken from the battery ?

Does this mean in a perfect world I'd want the regen figure as close to 0 as possible meaning only the energy taken from the battery was used to power the car ? The app suggests 87% of the energy was used driving the car, 9% for electronic devices and 4% for climate control.

Even more recent 3 series were not great inside in my opinion. Can't remember the year precisely (2011 probably) but there was a deal for the 520d SE on the company car scheme and they were fairly cheap. Sat in one and thought it was a nice car with a quality interior. Then sat in a 320d.... I really didn't like it. By the time I came to be ready to order a new car, the 520 deals were gone.

I also thought I should consider a 3 series in 1999 but just sitting in one made me think I did not like it. Might have driven really well and I'm sure it did. But an underpowered one with not so great interior was not for me.