BMW i3 Charges Under 3 Hours on 3,658-Mile Europe Road Trip
BMW's i3 sedan covered 3,658 miles from Norway to Spain with 2 hours and 46 minutes of charging. Here are the numbers behind the record.
BMW drove its new i3 electric sedan 3,658 miles (5,886.7 kilometers) across Europe and spent only 2 hours and 46 minutes plugged in, according to Jalopnik and InsideEVs. The automaker says the result beats the previous record for the Paneuropeana, an EV rally route, by more than seven hours. That earlier mark was set in 2017.
The car was an i3 50 xDrive. It started at the North Cape in Norway and finished in Tarifa, Spain, after passing through eight countries.
How the Paneuropeana works
The route was devised by Rafael de Mestre, who has driven around the globe in electric cars four times. The aim is to cross Europe from north to south while spending as little time charging as possible. Drivers must reach set checkpoints, but they pick their own roads and charging stops. BMW said the stages are meant to resemble ordinary travel on country roads, motorways and through towns, not a race.
BMW used public chargers. Footage of the trip shows the team letting the car run down to 0% with no range left at one point, and finding a high-power station with no working chargers at another. Only one engineer rode in the i3 at a time, while an identical i3 and an iX3 followed as support vehicles. The whole drive took 3 days, 2 hours and 41 minutes.
The numbers behind the record
- Charging time: 2 hours, 45 minutes and 54 seconds in total, per InsideEVs.
- Average charging power: 275 kW, against a peak DC rate of 400 kW for the car.
- Average speed: 49.5 mph, which BMW gives as 79.7 km/h.
- Consumption: 12.5 kWh per 100 km, around 5 miles per kWh.
- Battery: 108.7 kWh, with 463 horsepower from a dual-motor setup.
BMW has not said how many charging stops the i3 made or how long the typical stop lasted.
Range and charging figures for the i3
The i3 50 xDrive has an EPA rating of up to 468 miles, measured with 20-inch summer tires, and 567 miles on the European WLTP test cycle. InsideEVs calculated that at the trip’s consumption the battery would deliver 540 miles (869 km) of real-world driving before reaching 0%. The test car ran 19-inch aero wheels and low-rolling-resistance tires, which InsideEVs said helped.
BMW quotes 21 minutes to charge from 10% to 80%. The sources give different figures for what 10 minutes of charging adds. Jalopnik cites 180 miles for the U.S.-spec car, while InsideEVs cites up to 263 miles (423 km) of WLTP range.
The i3 uses BMW’s sixth-generation electric drive technology, which includes an 800-volt architecture and cylindrical battery cells arranged in a cell-to-pack design. It also supports bidirectional charging. For background on charging speeds, see our explainer on charging levels and DC fast times.
What this means for EV road trips
Charging time is the main extra cost of a long electric drive, and this run puts it under three hours over more than 3,000 miles. It was done on public chargers rather than a dedicated network, and on a car with the EPA and WLTP figures above. Efficiency counted as much as charging speed: at about 5 miles per kWh, each stop went further.
BMW had already shown the range of its Neue Klasse platform last year with an iX3 that went 626 miles (1,007 km) from Debrecen, Hungary, to Munich without recharging. It arrived with 2% of the battery left, according to InsideEVs, after mostly country-road driving and with systems such as air conditioning switched off.
