Comparison Tests
From the September 2014 Issue of Car and Driver
In Los Angeles County, and particularly on the ocean side of the I-405 freeway, eco-awareness is the highest virtue. The Tesla Model S is the halo car, and most cabs are Priuses. ChargePoint.com’s online locator lists a staggering 49 electric-car chargers in Century City, the 176-acre high-end westside district built on what was once the back lot of 20th Century Fox. That’s 15 more chargers than the whole 49.5-million-acre state of Nebraska can claim.
There isn’t any place in North America more eager or ready for the all-electric BMW i3 and Mercedes-Benz B-class Electric Drive than trendy, liberal, and prosperous West L.A. But, as electric cars with less than 100 miles of range, the i3 and the B are constrained by a tight support system. The public chargers in populated areas are often in facilities where the parking is expensive. C/D paid only $1.16 per car in electricity to charge the BMW and Mercedes at a port in Century City, but the building dinged us another $35 each for parking.
Meanwhile, at a charger in Oxnard, a coastal city about 50 miles north, the parking was free during the three-hour recharge, but the only place to hang out was a Subway/Shell station across the street. And chargers are often unmarked or squirreled away in, for instance, the valet-parking garage at the Universal City Hilton.
Familiarity with the fledgling charging eco-system makes living with these cars more straightforward. But their use demands careful planning in a way the 200-mile-plus-range Tesla doesn’t. The easygoing freedom offered by gasoline-powered cars is a far-off dream with these things.
Still, the assumption that all electrics perform the same—whirring anonymously from tee box to fairway to bunker to green—doesn’t align with reality. Except that both suckle from standardized SAE J1772 connectors, start at about $42,000, and are more or less equally quick, these two couldn’t be more different in conception or character. The B-class is an electric Mercedes-Benz. BMW’s i3 is a moon buggy.
