Spending a week with an electric car can change one’s outlook towards such vehicles but upfront costs are an issue

At the outset, I should make one thing clear that the BMW i3s is a luxury car, it might be an eco-friendly BMW with recycled plastic being used as well as environmental-friendly fabric for the seat and the few bits of (fake) leather were offcuts from the production line, but this is a BMW nonetheless. This is therefore, not a car for everyone, but is one of the most popular electric vehicles in Europe. Priced at around 40,000 Euros, if it were to come to India, if incentives are offered for the import of electric vehicles, such as no additional excise, it will still cost at least Rs 35 lakh, only a bit less than a brand-new BMW 3-series or X1. However, driving one for a week, complete with its new green registration plates that electric vehicles are allowed to use was an eye-opener for this writer.

To be fair, this column had been written about the i3s when we had driven it in Portugal a year and half ago, but that was a media drive where one did not have to deal with the nitty-gritty of living with an electric vehicle, that is charging. Now, we know that India does not have enough charging infrastructure as yet, and more on that later. But I could charge the i3s at home, thanks to a couple of reasons. Firstly, I had covered parking and a plug-point as well as a three-phase power connection. While charging from a low amperage point meant that the car took over twelve hours to charge from empty and on ‘Comfort’ mode it took twelve hours.

In ‘Comfort’ mode, the default mode of the car had 218 kilometers of range on full charge. On ‘Eco Pro’ mode, the car had around 250 kilometers of range and in ‘Eco Pro+’ over 300 kilometres of range. I, however, kept the car on ‘Comfort’ most of the time as it allowed me to use the air-conditioner without any issues, it is summer in Delhi after all. I’d also plugged in my mobile phone so as to listen to music and actual range was a lot higher than the initial indicated one because the i3s has a very good regenerating system that charges the battery whenever you lift your foot off the pedal so much so that you rarely end up using the brakes.

So what are the headline numbers. The car claimed that it was consuming 12.9 kilowatt-hours (units) of electricity for every 100 kilometers of driving. Now, in Delhi, residential power costs Rs 7.75 per unit at maximum rates, this means that the i3s has a running cost, if you buy power at the peak rate, of just Rs 1 per km. That, frankly, is unbeatable by any petrol or diesel car. Keep in mind that fixed costs remain the same, any few households fall into the peak charge for electricity. So overall costs will, using a back of the envelope calculation, be around 80 paise per kilometre. A small petrol hatchback such as the Hyundai i20 or Suzuki Baleno would have a per-kilometre cost of Rs 5.5. Even with BMW’s 1,00,000 kilometre warranty on the battery and rising fuel prices going forward, which is almost certain, savings on running cost over that period will be Rs 8 lakh at best, not enough to make up the difference. Maybe if you considered this over a BMW X1 for example, you might save money but that is all dependent on a benevolent government which wants to promote electric car usage in India and keeps import duties low or at zero at least initially to seed the market.

But this does not preclude the fact that the i3s will, even if not charged import duties, cost 3.5 times that of a standard hatchback. And then there is an issue with infrastructure, there are some charging stations built in and around Delhi by Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) for the fleet of government electric vehicles, including one at Jor Bagh Market near the offices of the Environment Ministry. But guess what, that charging system is not compatible with that of the BMW. This is like needing an iPhone charger and finding a Micro-USB charger. So well, I could not try that out. This incompatibility issue is something that the industry and government will need to deal with.

The i3s is actually an amazing car to drive around the city. For one the instant power delivery and almost perfectly linear acceleration means that it overtakes with surprising ease, it can be rather quick if you want it to be and thanks to its excellent centre-of-gravity, it handles like you expect a BMW should. But this is just a technology-demonstrator brought here by BMW to showcase their technology and train their service engineers. However, I do wish that the carmaker does share this car with someone in the government and let them drive around and get some idea of how to formulate electric vehicle policy going forward.