The Look-at-Mirror “Active Lane Change” feature is newly enabled for 2025 iXs. The 2023-2024 model years have “Auto Lane Change”, so the car will change lanes for you if you have BMW nav enabled and need to go across multiple lanes. Works magically and very smoothly!
Assuming you have a charger at home, how does this benefit you, specifically time-wise?
Is your time worth more the delta in the price of gas vs. a “free” charge when you factor in your time looking for a charger that is working and open, waiting if you need to for an open charger, then waiting while charging, and finally getting back on course if you had to deviate?
I’ll call BMW at some point because it’s not overly critical since we rarely need to use it, but DAPP doesn’t seem to work on our car anymore.
It used to work, and now when I try it just says only regular cruise control is available. Anyone else experienced that?
I believe DAPP can only be used on mapped highways, like SuperCruise, but someone may need to confirm.
Going from 20% to 80% in 30 minutes takes a lot less time than charging at home for 7 or 8 hours to get the same result.
My time is free and my cost savings resulting from free charging is around $150/week so, for me, the math is quite simple. Whatever “waiting” or “delays” maybe introduced are planned into my trip ahead of time, I actually enjoy the time spent charging and don’t mind some downtime every 4 hours.
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Yea I know it’s not everywhere. What I’m saying is that it stopped working on highways it used to work on.
Is your car being used at night while you sleep for 7-8 hours so that it can’t be charged then?
This is where it makes it difficult to understand how an EV is convenient or makes sense beyond an overnight charge and local commutes. If your time is truly “free” then I guess you have much less going on than most people when it comes to family, kids, work, hobbies, downtime and life in general. 
On the other hand I have no problem spending 5 minutes per week at the pump paying less than I would for off-peak electricity charging overnight in California even with solar. The great equalizer is that my time is not “free” so those sits at a Walmart parking lot waiting for a charger to be free are avoided altogether.
I fully understand that for many people an EV will “work” based upon their use, aside from the political and environmental arguments both sides make that are irrelevant. For just as many, once you leave your garage charger (assuming you have cheap kWh rates), actually have to drive more than 100 miles and truly value your time it is not realistic.
Having a 2nd or 3rd or ICE car certainly is an offset to these issues but many people don’t have that option/luxury as well.
Ime, charging 30 minutes in the middle of the trip actually only adds 10-20 minutes since we will still need 10-20 minutes for bathroom break anyway.
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My most common charging times are-
- During lunch, when I am driving to the same location as the chargers to spend 30 minutes anyway.
- After 11pm at night, where I would be either watching sportscenter or getting into arguments on LH.
- During road trips where I have already committed an entire day to my travel plans.
If I understand the argument, rather than using this time to save money by acquiring free energy, instead the suggestion is to pay a premium to get done 25 minutes faster.
I am constantly posting the stats from my road trips, just did 600-miles in the IX, which would have easily been $120 in gas. For me, this is a significant savings that makes frequent road-trips far more affordable.
I will admit, once my free charging hacks run out, the calculus will change.
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It works for you, and that is fine. It doesn’t work for others and that is fine as well.
Yes, I value my time and put a premium on it. $120 in gas will not impact that at all. However, repeatedly driving around looking for an open, functional charger and then waiting to charge and/or waiting while the car charges is not consistent with that, and that is also fine.
You and I apparently put a premium on different things, and guess what?
That is fine as well.
My SCE off-peak cost is $0.19 per kWh. I can drive the same miles for less money with my PHEV than with an ICE car assuming 30 miles per gallon and $5/gal Costco premium gas. EV math should be similar, maybe even favoring electricity further, depending on how many miles per kWh one gets.
Lots of people in CA even with a large solar array are using far more than they can generate on the AC, pool and home use in general. PG&E is one of the worst when it comes to plans, rates and getting killed across the board and the rates just went up again. SCE is generally better than SDG&E and PG&E.
Not hard at all to see how it does not work and you will see many people in that situation. Of course, and as you said, it is dependent on the m/kWh and your use case at your house. CPUC is aware of it but they have so far been punishing high use households nonstop since the fires and the PG&E gas explosion in San Bruno.
Good reads here:
https://www.autoweek.com/news/a44900159/are-electric-cars-worth-it/
There is an option in the Driving → Distance Control Menu to disable DAPP and use only Cruise Control. Did you accidentally tick it?
I just got the Cardata report for my 2024 BMW IX. I have just under 10K miles on it, driven over about 10 months of use. The BMS is reporting 98kwh energy content of the HV battery, where about 105 is usable at new – Based on that datapoint, I’m seeing 7% battery degradation, but it’s still forecasting a respectable 320 miles at 90% SOC.
Manheim is forecasting a slight increase in IX value over the next 30 days. Perhaps we have reached bottom…
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What’s it saying about the EQS580 SUV, out of curiosity?
Also, can’t believe 10k miles has resulted in 7% degradation already - that is extremely significant. Where do you get the cardata from?
My 2021 Model Y P was close to 20% degradation over the 20K miles I owned it. You can request the Cardata report from your My BMW garage, vehicle profile page, look for the Cardata tab and then click request report.
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There’s no substitute for doing a 100-0% test one’s self.
Yep, on my bill a few months back, SCE requested about an 80% price increase in the coming years. Green state my arse. It’s unfortunate because it will kill the EV business for many in Ca. . Only hope is that car lobbying fights it?
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Is that based on battery pack capacity or stated range by Tesla? If it’s the latter, it’s probably more like 7% degradation.
It was based on the service request I opened on loss of range. What Tesla actually said was that the pack had more then 80% of capacity available, and since the threshold is 70%, they closed the request. Based on my range testing, I drive the same long-distance route often, I was seeing about 20% loss but lots of variables to consider. I did not see that kind of loss on my M3LR, MYLR or MS.