I've gotten a number of requests for an Amazon echo review. I've been meditating on it since. The answer is no. No echo review. I thought briefly about making a parody video for the 'Amazone Marco' -- a squat cylinder that listens to every peep in your house and stands ready to answer 'Polo' whenever it hears the call.
I actually have a use for a whole house listening device. I would pay for a box that listens all night long and uses sophisticated cloud analytics to pinpoint skittering sounds and figure out where the damn mice are living. That device would do me more good than a whole jar of peanut butter.
The reason for my no is that I have already lived the dream and I'm not going back to it. I ran a whole-apartment voice recognition system back in about 1995 on an AMD DX4 120 box. It really sucked.
How can I possibly compare some cruddy open source rig on a twenty year old computer to the marvel of Amazon's echo and the even more marvelous cloud behind it? Easy. I was young then. My powers of self-delusion were at their peak. I believed that the rig I built actually worked. It just failed to understand me _that once_. It failed to be exciting even when armed with the belief that it was working perfectly.
Fast forward twenty years and I'm sure the technology has caught up with my illusion. Has my position changed? It has.
I now have children. I have a hundred frustrating conversations a day with actual English-speaking sentient creatures. They listen to every word they can catch whether meant for them or not and interrupt thought to clarify some point not meant for them. My eldest will soon be able to look things up in Wikipedia for me. I don't think that will be more satisfying that looking it up myself. I love my children. I don't need a new one from Amazon in my living room.
I like the idea of reduced school tuition for Amazon Prime customers though. Maybe they'll work on that next.
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
Thursday, November 6, 2014
malfunction
My BMW i3 spent most of last week at the dealer for warranty work. I picked it up on Halloween. Alas, the spirit of the season snuck into the car and revealed itself only after a 200 mile drive the next day. I got an ugly looking error message just a few miles from my destination.
The car said 'Drivetrain malfunction: continued driving is possible'. This inspires not much confidence. The error went away in the morning and I began my return trip. I got the same ugly message a few miles from home.
The car went back to the dealer early Monday morning and spent the next three days under scrutiny. The verdict? No problem. It won't happen again.
The trip I took pushed the envelope a bit. I barrelled down I-95 until I ran out of battery and then ran another hundred miles down the road running on the 600cc range extending motor. The extender is good for about 70mph steady state on level ground. I pressed about 71 with four people in the car. Error messages aside, it seemed pleasant and unremarkable. I stopped at the Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond and charged for a couple hours on the way home. I'm getting about 4.1 miles per kilowatt hour. That works out to about 138 MPGe. The combined EPA rating for the car is 117 MPGe.
My borrowed ride last week was a 2014 BMW 328. This week I ran around in a MINI Clubman.
I admired the Clubman from the moment it was announced. I kept it on my short list of potential replacement cars for years. It felt almost like a Miata breadvan. I had all the standard complaints about the cheesy switchgear and cheap plastics but the astonishingly bad automatic transmission makes my other complaints seem petty. The small motor was noisy at any point but cruise. I got only 31 mpg on my standard routine.
I said last week that I would not trade the 328 for my i3. I am now sure that I wouldn't buy Clubman either. BMW has built a real goldilocks car in the i3.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the i3 is that I wasn't attracted to it originally for its propeller badge or environmental credentials. I just don't care for automatic transmissions. My wife doesn't care for manual. We have driven separate cars for years but the logistics of non-interchangeable cars were mounting with children. Single speed electrics and Prius-style CVTs represent the compromise space. It's a happy accident that this space includes some of the best cars you can buy today.
The car said 'Drivetrain malfunction: continued driving is possible'. This inspires not much confidence. The error went away in the morning and I began my return trip. I got the same ugly message a few miles from home.
 |
| continued driving _is_ possible Photo courtesy your correspondent |
The car went back to the dealer early Monday morning and spent the next three days under scrutiny. The verdict? No problem. It won't happen again.
The trip I took pushed the envelope a bit. I barrelled down I-95 until I ran out of battery and then ran another hundred miles down the road running on the 600cc range extending motor. The extender is good for about 70mph steady state on level ground. I pressed about 71 with four people in the car. Error messages aside, it seemed pleasant and unremarkable. I stopped at the Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond and charged for a couple hours on the way home. I'm getting about 4.1 miles per kilowatt hour. That works out to about 138 MPGe. The combined EPA rating for the car is 117 MPGe.
My borrowed ride last week was a 2014 BMW 328. This week I ran around in a MINI Clubman.
I admired the Clubman from the moment it was announced. I kept it on my short list of potential replacement cars for years. It felt almost like a Miata breadvan. I had all the standard complaints about the cheesy switchgear and cheap plastics but the astonishingly bad automatic transmission makes my other complaints seem petty. The small motor was noisy at any point but cruise. I got only 31 mpg on my standard routine.
I said last week that I would not trade the 328 for my i3. I am now sure that I wouldn't buy Clubman either. BMW has built a real goldilocks car in the i3.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the i3 is that I wasn't attracted to it originally for its propeller badge or environmental credentials. I just don't care for automatic transmissions. My wife doesn't care for manual. We have driven separate cars for years but the logistics of non-interchangeable cars were mounting with children. Single speed electrics and Prius-style CVTs represent the compromise space. It's a happy accident that this space includes some of the best cars you can buy today.
Friday, October 31, 2014
escape
I wrote recently about troubles offline blogging from my Nexus 7 in its default state. My Nexus 7 has only intermittent mobile connectivity, no personal accounts, and only one app -- a sideloaded Firefox.
That experience led me to put the Nexus back in a drawer. I upgraded my iPads to iOS 8 this week and set out on a now annual journey of discovery to see if any of the list of things that bug me about iOS have been put to bed.
Here are the top three items on the list:
* Ability to control the camera from Javascript: Nope
* Ability to see escape and control key 'keypress' events from Javascript in Mobile Safari: Nope
* Ability in input a square brace from the virtual keyboard without a sticky keyboard mode change: Nope
With these ongoing omissions, it may be time to put iOS in the drawer for a while. My original complaint with the Nexus had nothing to do with its hardware or even the mechanics of the Android operating system. My complaint was about the utility of the device out-of-the-box.
Out came the Nexus. I paired my Apple Wireless Keyboard with the Nexus to see if Firefox or Chrome on Android would give me the control keys I love. They do.
My next steps were to load Fabrice Bellard's awesome jslinux in Firefox on the Nexus, fire up vi, and write this post. I'm in escape heaven.
I'll get the post out by catting it to the special device /dev/clipboard. If this were 1998, I could use IrDA to beam the text directly to my laptop, then edit and publish. Instead, I'll probably have to push the text to some kind of browser-available shared drive on the network and fish it back out with my laptop.
---
In fact, that is exactly what I did. I could have published directly from the Nexus if I were willing to use my blogger credentials on the tablet. My next experiment may be to see if I can pass the text between the tablet and my laptop with bluetooth or NFC. beam.py looks interesting.
Why do I do this? I have a Newton keyboard, a Palm keyboard, a keyboard for my Nokia 770, and keyboards for iOS and Android devices. They were all disappointments. Best Buy has ASUS and Toshiba laptops available for $229. That's cheaper than all iOS devices except the very cheapest iPod touch. It's astonishingly cheap.
I think I keep trying to turn cheap and underpowered gadgets into computers because it still seems familiar. It reminds me of my own path through the 8-bit era. I would probably give it up if I had ever had a Coleco Adam or one of the other ersatz computers actually fashioned from game machines.
I worry that tablets give us a view on the future of the rest of consumer computing. Apple's indifference to my escape key today on iOS could become the Mac view in not too long. Fewer people would notice the difference than noticed the lack of a floppy on the original iMac.
The Macintosh itself didn't have an escape key and wouldn't get one until Apple unified keyboards across the Mac and Apple II product lines in about 1987. Escape wandered off some Mac keyboards in 1990 but found its way into the revered Apple Extended Keyboard. Escape has stayed with Macs ever since.
 |
| Macintosh Plus Extended Keyboard Photo Courtesy MagicTom |
The cosmos is telling me something. It's telling me to ditch vi or it's telling me to build my own keyboards. I just can't tell which.
(a javascript keyboard tester is here)
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
anonymous
Reograph is a gadget philosophy blog. In the doing of it, I have learned something known to the philosophers of antiquity -- that philosophy is at least 5% fiction.
I blog anonymously as a conceit. The fiction here at reograph is mostly at the margin to let me preserve my private dream that anonymity is possible. Many readers already know me personally but here is the big reveal for the rest of you. I'm the one person on Earth who has owned a Fiat X1/9, a BMW 318ti, and a BMW i3. That's me. That's my unique first world identifier.
The information above is practically equivalent to my Social Security number and so this next disclosure is probably redundant: I moved back to Washington, DC not too long ago. I have a bunch of posts on deck that either reveal this indirectly or simply don't make sense without this tidbit.
In fact, the BMW i3 itself makes sense for me only because I now have a lot of city driving.
I bought my i3 from BMW of Annapolis. It was fine. Go buy yours there. I popped into the dealer yesterday to pick up a refund check for sales tax paid, but not owed (to DC). While I was there, I mentioned some minor complaint about some small detail and I was vectored instantly to service to get it sorted. Awesome. Once my car was 'booked' -- like a perp on a random procedural crime drama -- the small matter of outstanding recalls came up.
My car had two minor sounding recalls outstanding. One had no description available in English. In German, the recall was named by a single VIN-sized word. How important could a single word recall really be?
Here's a thing about new car models. They're all a little bit broken. This is OK. The fine folks at your dealer, like the fine folks at your manufacturer, are all a little concerned that this reality will influence your perception of the car, the dealer, and the brand.
That's part of why the dealer will call you and invite you back for a free reception, or a free detailing, or offer to place a fresher flower in your on-dash bud vase some time during your ownership experience. This is one of the reasons that oil service is included with many new cars. Silent recalls and TSBs get addressed without you ever being aware.
I recall ignoring these calls (from a different dealer) fifteen years ago with my first BMW. I didn't understand that what the service department really needed was fifteen minutes alone with the car. The battery died not long after a spurned call from the dealer inviting me to an emergency detailing session. When I complained that a battery failure was certainly a warranty failure on a year old car, they told me that the warranty was void because the necessary service hadn't been performed on the battery.
If you're under fifty, you might not recall that batteries used to require a periodic top-up with water. By 1998, BMW had somehow not adopted the maintenance free batteries in widespread use everywhere else. Little BMW elves had been topping up my battery with water and taking care of a dozen other little details whenever I turned up at the dealer for complimentary tire valve cap rotation.
When the dealer calls you to suggest that their service department might be the ideal viewing location for an upcoming solar eclipse, just go.
My i3 is still in the service department today. At last report, the car is getting a complimentary wash, detail, charge, and almost complete disassembly of the front end to replace a fuel tank pressure sensor. I hope to be reunited with it sometime tomorrow. The good news is that the entire i3 front end contains only a handful of parts.
While I wait for the safe return of my electro-chariot, I'm getting my rounds done with a new 328 loaner from the dealer. The 328 stickers for just about what I paid for the i3. It's meant to seem much more luxurious. It's meant to seem much faster. It is definitely much larger. I love the i3. I would not buy this 328.
The 328 has 'Efficient Dynamics' written on the window and as a bitmap graphic on the instrument cluster. Efficient Dynamics, as realized here, means that the engine stops and starts disconcertingly. This impression should worry BMW -- because I have also been driving a Prius for ten years that starts and stops automatically in a completely happy and concerting way.
The 328 has no sense of power steering with the engine shut off. If the engine shuts off in the middle of parallel parking -- as happened to me today -- the wheel is dead until the car figures out that you are trying to turn the wheel. The gas motor eventually spools up and power assisted steering is again available. The automatic start-up seems barely faster and less intrusive than cranking a car manually by turning the key. By this definition, almost all of my old cars developed an EfficientDynamics stalling disorder at some point in their life. My X1/9 would sometimes EfficientDynamic right in the middle of left hand turns across traffic. Dynamic!
Prius automatic engine start works in a totally different way. In the Prius, a large electric motor gets the car going immediately and _also_ spins the crank on the gas motor. The gas motor can pitch in by adding fuel and spark whenever it gets around to it.
I love cars. I love technology. I love the environment. I love the smell of gas at a racetrack. If you love even two of these, then don't bother with feeble start/stop technologies that are not also coupled with electric power steering, electric air conditioning, and at least a modest electric traction motor and battery. A hybrid with all of these things will still have less added complexity than the complexity of the 328's start/stop rig plus its turbocharger. For all its E.D., the 328 is turning in combined mileage in the low twenties on a circuit where the i3 manages almost a hundred and twenty (MPGe), my 2004 Prius whips out 45, and my astonishingly inefficient BMW 325 wagon turned in 24.
If you love those things but you simply must have a rear wheel drive BMW with a gas engine, get an i3 with range extender, a new i8, a three series hybrid, or the forthcoming X5 plug in. If you're in DC, the folks at BMW of Annapolis seemed to me much more well versed in the new electric models. On a pre-purchase trip to a different area dealer, a salesman incorrectly identified which end of the car held the range extending gas motor.
I blog anonymously as a conceit. The fiction here at reograph is mostly at the margin to let me preserve my private dream that anonymity is possible. Many readers already know me personally but here is the big reveal for the rest of you. I'm the one person on Earth who has owned a Fiat X1/9, a BMW 318ti, and a BMW i3. That's me. That's my unique first world identifier.
The information above is practically equivalent to my Social Security number and so this next disclosure is probably redundant: I moved back to Washington, DC not too long ago. I have a bunch of posts on deck that either reveal this indirectly or simply don't make sense without this tidbit.
In fact, the BMW i3 itself makes sense for me only because I now have a lot of city driving.
I bought my i3 from BMW of Annapolis. It was fine. Go buy yours there. I popped into the dealer yesterday to pick up a refund check for sales tax paid, but not owed (to DC). While I was there, I mentioned some minor complaint about some small detail and I was vectored instantly to service to get it sorted. Awesome. Once my car was 'booked' -- like a perp on a random procedural crime drama -- the small matter of outstanding recalls came up.
My car had two minor sounding recalls outstanding. One had no description available in English. In German, the recall was named by a single VIN-sized word. How important could a single word recall really be?
Here's a thing about new car models. They're all a little bit broken. This is OK. The fine folks at your dealer, like the fine folks at your manufacturer, are all a little concerned that this reality will influence your perception of the car, the dealer, and the brand.
That's part of why the dealer will call you and invite you back for a free reception, or a free detailing, or offer to place a fresher flower in your on-dash bud vase some time during your ownership experience. This is one of the reasons that oil service is included with many new cars. Silent recalls and TSBs get addressed without you ever being aware.
I recall ignoring these calls (from a different dealer) fifteen years ago with my first BMW. I didn't understand that what the service department really needed was fifteen minutes alone with the car. The battery died not long after a spurned call from the dealer inviting me to an emergency detailing session. When I complained that a battery failure was certainly a warranty failure on a year old car, they told me that the warranty was void because the necessary service hadn't been performed on the battery.
If you're under fifty, you might not recall that batteries used to require a periodic top-up with water. By 1998, BMW had somehow not adopted the maintenance free batteries in widespread use everywhere else. Little BMW elves had been topping up my battery with water and taking care of a dozen other little details whenever I turned up at the dealer for complimentary tire valve cap rotation.
When the dealer calls you to suggest that their service department might be the ideal viewing location for an upcoming solar eclipse, just go.
My i3 is still in the service department today. At last report, the car is getting a complimentary wash, detail, charge, and almost complete disassembly of the front end to replace a fuel tank pressure sensor. I hope to be reunited with it sometime tomorrow. The good news is that the entire i3 front end contains only a handful of parts.
While I wait for the safe return of my electro-chariot, I'm getting my rounds done with a new 328 loaner from the dealer. The 328 stickers for just about what I paid for the i3. It's meant to seem much more luxurious. It's meant to seem much faster. It is definitely much larger. I love the i3. I would not buy this 328.
The 328 has 'Efficient Dynamics' written on the window and as a bitmap graphic on the instrument cluster. Efficient Dynamics, as realized here, means that the engine stops and starts disconcertingly. This impression should worry BMW -- because I have also been driving a Prius for ten years that starts and stops automatically in a completely happy and concerting way.
The 328 has no sense of power steering with the engine shut off. If the engine shuts off in the middle of parallel parking -- as happened to me today -- the wheel is dead until the car figures out that you are trying to turn the wheel. The gas motor eventually spools up and power assisted steering is again available. The automatic start-up seems barely faster and less intrusive than cranking a car manually by turning the key. By this definition, almost all of my old cars developed an EfficientDynamics stalling disorder at some point in their life. My X1/9 would sometimes EfficientDynamic right in the middle of left hand turns across traffic. Dynamic!
Prius automatic engine start works in a totally different way. In the Prius, a large electric motor gets the car going immediately and _also_ spins the crank on the gas motor. The gas motor can pitch in by adding fuel and spark whenever it gets around to it.
I love cars. I love technology. I love the environment. I love the smell of gas at a racetrack. If you love even two of these, then don't bother with feeble start/stop technologies that are not also coupled with electric power steering, electric air conditioning, and at least a modest electric traction motor and battery. A hybrid with all of these things will still have less added complexity than the complexity of the 328's start/stop rig plus its turbocharger. For all its E.D., the 328 is turning in combined mileage in the low twenties on a circuit where the i3 manages almost a hundred and twenty (MPGe), my 2004 Prius whips out 45, and my astonishingly inefficient BMW 325 wagon turned in 24.
If you love those things but you simply must have a rear wheel drive BMW with a gas engine, get an i3 with range extender, a new i8, a three series hybrid, or the forthcoming X5 plug in. If you're in DC, the folks at BMW of Annapolis seemed to me much more well versed in the new electric models. On a pre-purchase trip to a different area dealer, a salesman incorrectly identified which end of the car held the range extending gas motor.
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
data on sale
I wrote about cord cutting two months ago. I ditched my DSL in favor of a tethered LTE iPad for my entire domestic connectivity. I got 30 GB of data from Verizon for $225 -- a marginal increase of $155 over my previous cell phone bill.
I found soon after that 30GB wasn't quite enough. I went to 40 GB for $300, and even then a bit past. This was starting to look like real money. My gamble was that data prices would tumble in just the way that my DSL price never did. The gamble paid off yesterday when I took advantage of a data sale at Verizon. My plan is now for 60 GB for $225. I could have kept 40 GB for $150.
At that price, LTE would have matched my previous DSL price point with better speed and a modest constraint on my usage. At 60 GB, I live unconstrained. Dropping data prices are a reality. The new question is whether they will fall faster than my usage grows. I wager they will.
I found soon after that 30GB wasn't quite enough. I went to 40 GB for $300, and even then a bit past. This was starting to look like real money. My gamble was that data prices would tumble in just the way that my DSL price never did. The gamble paid off yesterday when I took advantage of a data sale at Verizon. My plan is now for 60 GB for $225. I could have kept 40 GB for $150.
At that price, LTE would have matched my previous DSL price point with better speed and a modest constraint on my usage. At 60 GB, I live unconstrained. Dropping data prices are a reality. The new question is whether they will fall faster than my usage grows. I wager they will.
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
charged
I'm on a train in England. My bags are packed for home. My gadgets are charged. I have been fed. Reograph time.
It is always difficult for me to do any computing in England without thinking of the hardware of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. That machine functioned not only as imagined Wikipedia but also as Ford Prefect's reporter's notebook for 15 disconnected years on Earth. Even today, the model 100 might be more fit for that purpose than a stock tablet.
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
neue neue klasse
I recently bought a new BMW i3. Some thoughts:
BMW introduced the 1500 sedan in the fall of 1962. This was the first of the 'Neue Klasse' cars, and the first of a line from which most modern BMW cars can trace their lineage. 1500 begat 1600, 1800, and 2000 cars. These sedans, in turn, begat the BMW 5 series cars. The 1600 also begat the 1602 and 2002 cars that became the BMW 3 series.
Of all the Neue Klasse cars, none stand out more in popular automotive mythology than the 2002. That car may be the one that established BMW as a sporting line in the mind of the American driver. It spawned performance versions, the 2002tii and 2002 Turbo, that are the grandparents of BMW's storied M3.
I think my grandfather drove a BMW 1600 until the rear of the car rusted away. I have owned a couple of Neue Klasse descendants myself. In 1998, I ordered a 318ti 'Sport Package' with a full length folding canvas sunroof. This turned out to be an especially rare configuration. The 'M sport' models differed from more proletariat models mostly by the addition of a badge labeled 'M' on the side.
I loved that car. It came to the US market in 1995 as the first BMW hatchback coupe in 21 years. Its grandfather was the BMW 1802 Touring -- a Neue Klasse car. Chronic sunroof leaks in the rare canvas roof ('rare', 'canvas', and 'roof' in once sentence are a recipe for dampness, by the way) fed a mold invasion. The car was so great that I drove it even when it gave me a damp bum from wet seats. I gave it away ten years later when my first child was born.
I have missed that car since. I flew to Cleveland last year to buy a used BMW wagon to replace a Miata. Wonderful car. I was so nostalgic for hatch-backed BMW motoring fun that I overlooked the obvious. Cleveland cars rust. My wagon has superficial body rust that does not bother me. It also has extensive rear suspension rust that make some simple, now necessary, repairs expensive.
Out with the old, in with the new. My long experience with these Neue Klasse cars and their descendants is probably over. It ended, strangely, with the purchase of another new BMW.
I recently bought a new BMW i3 electric car. This car shares essentially nothing but a badge with the rest of the BMW cars on the show floor today. It is a marvel. Alien though it appears, it too has ancestors in the BMW family tree.
Before the Neue Klasse was Neue, The BMW 700 coupe was the new new thing. The 700 was a small, rear-engined car that helped pull BMW out of a financial crisis and put it on the path to the introduction of the Neue Klasse. 700-series cars continued in production until they were replaced by the affordable '02' series of Neue Klasse coupes.
The 700 was BMW's first monocoque car. It would be BMW's last rear-engined car for almost 50 years. It would be BMW's last car with a motorcycle-derived engine for the same period. Some argue that BMW exited the economy car market when 700 sales ended. I can't argue with that.
I will argue a more outlandish thing. I think BMW has just reentered the economy car market with a car that is a direct spiritual descendant of the BMW 700. The new i3 is the first mass produced BMW with a totally new chassis -- aluminum and carbon fibre reinforced plastic -- since the monocoque 700. The new i3, in the range extended form I bought, also features a motorcycle engine in the rear just like the 700.
The i3 clearly differs from the 700. It's an electric car that looks like a spaceship. The BMW 700 was remarkable for making a motorcycle-engined car look surprisingly normal. The 700 was an economy car and the i3 starts at 42 thousand dollars. I think there is a marvelous economy car hiding behind that luxury price tag.
For many buyers, ten thousand dollars of that price tag will come off the top as federal, state, and local tax incentives. A 42 thousand dollar car becomes a 32 thousand dollar car. From there, a substantial economy will come from very low operating costs. My BMW wagon generated a monthly gas bill of $250. My Prius would shred that bill into a $125 charge. The i3 will turn it into perhaps $60 in electricity and a few bucks in gas.
The gas bill is nice, but the i3 offers a battery only about as large as the battery in the much cheaper Nissan Leaf. How is the BMW car the economy choice at a ten thousand dollar premium over the Leaf?
It isn't today. I would have to be smoking the finest grade first-world hemp upholstery (which the i3 features, by the way) to claim otherwise. It appears that no expense has been spared in the design of the car. The carbon fiber body is remarkable. Here's another remarkable tidbit missed in most of the road tests -- the radio on the base car has an 'iDrive' menu with one screen for 'tone'. Treble, bass, and balance. That's it. Not even the fade control present on my 1983 Mercury Lynx. Why no fade? I think there aren't even rear speakers! The rear doors don't lock or even have external door handles. Rear windows don't open either.
There is no elaborate ducting to move conditioned air to the rear passengers. Instead, the low profile seats work together with the flat cabin floor to let air circulate from just a few registers.
I truly admire BMW's principled restraint here. The base i3 lacks many little geegaws that are standard even on low end econoboxes. Unlike those cars, it features a spacious rear seat and comfort for four adults. Every gadget present is lightweight, energy efficient, or especially meaningful in an electric car.
There is a brilliant twenty thousand dollar car waiting to emerge from this car when it next molts. I get some push back from self-styled BMW purists on this point. Some seem threatened by the idea of a cheap BMW. I heard it all when I owned the 318ti -- BMW's last car in the U.S. available for less than twenty thousand dollars. I disagree. The 2002 was an inexpensive car. Here's how Car and Driver summarized that ride in 1968:
I can't summon better language to describe the new BMW i3. The 2002 used 114 horsepower to wind a two thousand pound car around a mountain the way a yoyo ascends its string. The i3 uses 170-hp/184 ft-lb AC motor to spin its twenty eight hundred pounds just the same way. The two cars share a bolt upright seating position, an airy greenhouse, and the same power to weight ratio. The i3 has better brakes and better tires. Fifty years of material science has conjured a revolution there that rivals the miracle of a 22 kWh lithium ion battery pack. Remarkably, the i3 has the lower center of gravity.
The 2002 listed for $2850 in '68. That target was just twenty bucks above the average new car price. Fast forward to 2014 and the base i3 -- with tax credits -- stickers for only hundreds dollars above the 2013 average new vehicle price of 32 thousand dollars.
The problem with that happy equivalence is that an average new car is unaffordable for average Americans. The other problem is that gas doesn't cost 1968's 34 cents a gallon. I think that BMW can kill two birds with one stone. The i3 lays a technological framework for an excellent and affordable car priced in the twenties. Its efficient drivetrain can deliver energy bills straight out of the sixties.
I am enjoying my new front row seat. It's upright with great, tall windows all around. I may not be able to see in every direction, but the past and the future look pretty clear from here.
BMW introduced the 1500 sedan in the fall of 1962. This was the first of the 'Neue Klasse' cars, and the first of a line from which most modern BMW cars can trace their lineage. 1500 begat 1600, 1800, and 2000 cars. These sedans, in turn, begat the BMW 5 series cars. The 1600 also begat the 1602 and 2002 cars that became the BMW 3 series.
Of all the Neue Klasse cars, none stand out more in popular automotive mythology than the 2002. That car may be the one that established BMW as a sporting line in the mind of the American driver. It spawned performance versions, the 2002tii and 2002 Turbo, that are the grandparents of BMW's storied M3.
I think my grandfather drove a BMW 1600 until the rear of the car rusted away. I have owned a couple of Neue Klasse descendants myself. In 1998, I ordered a 318ti 'Sport Package' with a full length folding canvas sunroof. This turned out to be an especially rare configuration. The 'M sport' models differed from more proletariat models mostly by the addition of a badge labeled 'M' on the side.
I loved that car. It came to the US market in 1995 as the first BMW hatchback coupe in 21 years. Its grandfather was the BMW 1802 Touring -- a Neue Klasse car. Chronic sunroof leaks in the rare canvas roof ('rare', 'canvas', and 'roof' in once sentence are a recipe for dampness, by the way) fed a mold invasion. The car was so great that I drove it even when it gave me a damp bum from wet seats. I gave it away ten years later when my first child was born.
I have missed that car since. I flew to Cleveland last year to buy a used BMW wagon to replace a Miata. Wonderful car. I was so nostalgic for hatch-backed BMW motoring fun that I overlooked the obvious. Cleveland cars rust. My wagon has superficial body rust that does not bother me. It also has extensive rear suspension rust that make some simple, now necessary, repairs expensive.
Out with the old, in with the new. My long experience with these Neue Klasse cars and their descendants is probably over. It ended, strangely, with the purchase of another new BMW.
I recently bought a new BMW i3 electric car. This car shares essentially nothing but a badge with the rest of the BMW cars on the show floor today. It is a marvel. Alien though it appears, it too has ancestors in the BMW family tree.
Before the Neue Klasse was Neue, The BMW 700 coupe was the new new thing. The 700 was a small, rear-engined car that helped pull BMW out of a financial crisis and put it on the path to the introduction of the Neue Klasse. 700-series cars continued in production until they were replaced by the affordable '02' series of Neue Klasse coupes.
The 700 was BMW's first monocoque car. It would be BMW's last rear-engined car for almost 50 years. It would be BMW's last car with a motorcycle-derived engine for the same period. Some argue that BMW exited the economy car market when 700 sales ended. I can't argue with that.
I will argue a more outlandish thing. I think BMW has just reentered the economy car market with a car that is a direct spiritual descendant of the BMW 700. The new i3 is the first mass produced BMW with a totally new chassis -- aluminum and carbon fibre reinforced plastic -- since the monocoque 700. The new i3, in the range extended form I bought, also features a motorcycle engine in the rear just like the 700.
The i3 clearly differs from the 700. It's an electric car that looks like a spaceship. The BMW 700 was remarkable for making a motorcycle-engined car look surprisingly normal. The 700 was an economy car and the i3 starts at 42 thousand dollars. I think there is a marvelous economy car hiding behind that luxury price tag.
For many buyers, ten thousand dollars of that price tag will come off the top as federal, state, and local tax incentives. A 42 thousand dollar car becomes a 32 thousand dollar car. From there, a substantial economy will come from very low operating costs. My BMW wagon generated a monthly gas bill of $250. My Prius would shred that bill into a $125 charge. The i3 will turn it into perhaps $60 in electricity and a few bucks in gas.
The gas bill is nice, but the i3 offers a battery only about as large as the battery in the much cheaper Nissan Leaf. How is the BMW car the economy choice at a ten thousand dollar premium over the Leaf?
It isn't today. I would have to be smoking the finest grade first-world hemp upholstery (which the i3 features, by the way) to claim otherwise. It appears that no expense has been spared in the design of the car. The carbon fiber body is remarkable. Here's another remarkable tidbit missed in most of the road tests -- the radio on the base car has an 'iDrive' menu with one screen for 'tone'. Treble, bass, and balance. That's it. Not even the fade control present on my 1983 Mercury Lynx. Why no fade? I think there aren't even rear speakers! The rear doors don't lock or even have external door handles. Rear windows don't open either.
There is no elaborate ducting to move conditioned air to the rear passengers. Instead, the low profile seats work together with the flat cabin floor to let air circulate from just a few registers.
I truly admire BMW's principled restraint here. The base i3 lacks many little geegaws that are standard even on low end econoboxes. Unlike those cars, it features a spacious rear seat and comfort for four adults. Every gadget present is lightweight, energy efficient, or especially meaningful in an electric car.
There is a brilliant twenty thousand dollar car waiting to emerge from this car when it next molts. I get some push back from self-styled BMW purists on this point. Some seem threatened by the idea of a cheap BMW. I heard it all when I owned the 318ti -- BMW's last car in the U.S. available for less than twenty thousand dollars. I disagree. The 2002 was an inexpensive car. Here's how Car and Driver summarized that ride in 1968:
"To my way of thinking, the 2002 is one of modern civilization's all-time best ways to get somewhere sitting down. It grabs you. You sit in magnificently-adjustable seats with great, tall windows all around you. You are comfortable and you can see in every direction. You start it. Willing and un-lumpy is how it feels. No rough idle, no zappy noises to indicate that the task you propose might be anything more than child's play for all those 114 Bavarian superhorses."
-- from Car and Driver's 1968 review of the BMW 2002
I can't summon better language to describe the new BMW i3. The 2002 used 114 horsepower to wind a two thousand pound car around a mountain the way a yoyo ascends its string. The i3 uses 170-hp/184 ft-lb AC motor to spin its twenty eight hundred pounds just the same way. The two cars share a bolt upright seating position, an airy greenhouse, and the same power to weight ratio. The i3 has better brakes and better tires. Fifty years of material science has conjured a revolution there that rivals the miracle of a 22 kWh lithium ion battery pack. Remarkably, the i3 has the lower center of gravity.
The 2002 listed for $2850 in '68. That target was just twenty bucks above the average new car price. Fast forward to 2014 and the base i3 -- with tax credits -- stickers for only hundreds dollars above the 2013 average new vehicle price of 32 thousand dollars.
The problem with that happy equivalence is that an average new car is unaffordable for average Americans. The other problem is that gas doesn't cost 1968's 34 cents a gallon. I think that BMW can kill two birds with one stone. The i3 lays a technological framework for an excellent and affordable car priced in the twenties. Its efficient drivetrain can deliver energy bills straight out of the sixties.
I am enjoying my new front row seat. It's upright with great, tall windows all around. I may not be able to see in every direction, but the past and the future look pretty clear from here.
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I can't spare the phone for reography this morning. I need it for train updates and electronic boarding passes and even a phone call if everything else goes wrong. I can't use the camera for reography. This tablet doesn't really have a role in my day to day life. I didn't even realize it was in my bag until last night.
I bought the tablet to play with HTML5 media APIs in Chrome and Firefox. I leave it stock and use only those apps. I load nothing else and I use no personal accounts. On this trip, the tablet is essentially disconnected. My phone's hotspot feature disappeared when I bought the wrong local SIM.
In the plus column, Quickoffice does rotate from portrait to landscape. Moses' tablets didn't. In the minus column, the landscape interface is apalling. The keyboard takes up a lot of space. Fine.
Quickoffice trashes an astonishing fraction of the balance with a pointless and unwelcome interface ribbon. Above my editing slit now is a giant blue 'W' to remind me that I'm editing a document and not a spreadsheet. The name of the document is up there. It probably takes up as much space as the letter 'Q' on the keyboard and isn't quite as useful. Below the name are 25 characters telling me that my document is not saved. Next comes an enormous swath of empty space. Then a picture of a 3.5" floppy diskette. I'm old enough to read that rune but I don't know who else is. Then come mystery buttons. Those runes elude me. I suspect at least one to be a booby trap.
Photo courtesy your correspondent
I never had a Tandy 100 portable. I didn't see one on the museum shelves but I saw a number of similarly elegant portables from the era. I have nothing but respect for the nexus tablet hardware, but I wonder if it would be put to a better use emulating the model 100 than running Quickoffice. The nexus tablet is simply not ready for battle as it comes out of the box.