Here's a good example from a BBC article about Electric Vehicle subsidies:

There are around 1.3 million electric cars on Britain's roads but currently only around 82,000 public charging points.

Bloody hell! That's rubbish! Bring down the government! Woke nonsense!

OK, let's take a moment to contextualise those number.

There are about 34 million cars on the road. About 1.3 million cars are pure electric. So, about 32,680,000 dinosaur-juice cars.

How many petrol pumps do you think there are in the UK?

Have a guess.

Back in 2021, the BBC reported on the decline in petrol stations:

If this prediction is correct it is a death sentence for many of the 8,380 petrol stations in the UK.

Wait…! So there are 0.06 public chargers per EV, but only 0.0002 petrol stations per fossil fuel car?!!?

Lots of EV chargers will have multiple charging heads - allowing two or more vehicles to be charged at once. Similarly, petrol stations often have multiple pumps.

Let's assume that every EV charger can only do one car at a time, and every fuel station has 10 pumps. That's still a hell of a lot more chargers per EV than pumps per petrol car.

Of course, the elephant in the room is charging time. Electric Vehicle take much longer to recharge than a petrol car takes to refuel. As a rough average, an EV takes 30 minutes to get to 80% full. That will depend on the speed of the charger and the capacity of the battery. It takes maybe 10% of that time to fill a petrol car from empty to full.

But petrol cars always need to be refilled in public. Most EVs are recharged in private. Sat on a driveway or plugged into a lamp-post overnight, they start the day full. Given the average journey length of under 10 miles, the typical EV will never need to use public charger!

There are around a million home EV chargers installed. Around 2/3rds of home have access to off-street parking which would allow a private charger to be installed. That just doesn't happen with petrol. You can't install a petrol pump at home.

All of those EVs will start the day with the capacity to take 20 average trips before needing to recharge. If any of those trips end at a supermarket, work car park, or anywhere else with a charger, they'll start their next journey full.

Suppose that you do decide to drive >200 miles in a single journey. You should be taking a 15 minute break every 2 hours - but let's say you go for 4 hours, taking your car from full to empty. At which point, you probably need a piss and want to stretch your legs. Plug in at a service station, go to the loo, have an overpriced coffee and disappointing sandwich, walk back to the car and - oh look - it's practically full.

Does the country need more public chargers? Probably, yes. Are chargers all concentrated in wealthy suburbs or evenly distributed? Who knows. What are the current occupancy levels of public chargers? Those would all be excellent questions to research and publish.

Presenting context-free numbers doesn't help people understand the scale of the problem.

Frequently Made Comments

Please don't bother replying with any of the following:

peOpLe sHoUlD jUsT UsE publiC trANsporT

I agree.

wHAt ABoUt bAtTERY sWappiNg

Until every car has an identical chassis and battery, it isn't going to happen.

i liVe IN amErica And ALWAys dRive 700 MILeS pER dAy up fRozen MoUNTainS

We're talking about the UK. Most people don't have regular journeys like that.

i likE THE LOud NoISE MY eNgIne MAkes

Everyone else on the street hates you

Well, that didn't exactly turn out that way! But as our electronics have become more efficient, the cost of processing payments begins to outweigh the cost of providing electricity. How much would you pay to fully charge your smartphone? A quid? 50p? If you're desperate, a fiver?

A modern phone battery can hold about 22Wh (Watt-hours) of electricity. My domestic power provider charges about 13p per kWh (kilowatt-hour). So the energy in your phone costs less than half a penny.

If you have the latest Tesla, with the biggest battery - 100kWh I think - the total cost of electricity will be around £13. My car, the slightly more modest Soul EV, has a 30 kWh pack - less than £4 to fill from empty.

Given that most people won't be charging from 0% to 100% - and most merchants won't let you use a credit card for anything under a fiver - we can safely say that electric cars are too efficient to meter :-)

Except, that's not how the real world works. Use a litre of water at home and it'll cost you less than a penny - but buy a litre of water from a supermarket and you'll pay considerably more.

Why? Partly the infrastructure to supply you, partly the plastic bottle. Add in the advertising costs, staffing costs, insurance, and goodness knows what else - and you can see how expensive shop-bought water can be.

The same applies to supplying electricity for someone to consume. Even if you're just fitting a domestic plug socket, there's a labour cost involved, and the cost of periodic checks, and the cost of advertising that it is available. If you're supplying a rapid charger - 50kW as opposed to a domestic 7kW - there are some huge costs for equipment and supply.

For example, Electric Highway charges 30p per kWh to use their rapid chargers. But, even so, filling up from 20% to 80% is only going to cost a fiver. Once you factor in credit card fees, it's hardly worth collecting the cash. (And anyone who mentions a dodgy cryptocurrency being able to transfer funds instantly and for zero cost gets permabanned from this blog!)

So what are companies supposed to do? Broadly speaking, public car charging schemes fall into four categories.

1. Pay-as-you-go - with an inflated cost per kWh.
2. Pay-per-minute - sort-of makes sense if you're also paying for parking.
3. Pre-pay - top up your account by £X and pay per kWh from there.
4. Membership - pay £Y per month for unlimited charging.

For me, PAYG using a credit card makes the most sense. I mostly charge at home and don't regularly stop at the same charging station. I've used dozens of different charging schemes - here's a quick comparison.

Free! (ish)

I already had a standard 220V socket in my garage. My car came with a domestic charger. I plug it in when our solar panels are generating delicious free-range electricity from the sky gods.

Some public chargers are set to free vend. Usually in supermarket car parks. Electricity is a loss-leader; like cheap baked beans.

PAYG

This is the simplest method. Unfortunately, some schemes require you to pay using their app rather than just having a contactless credit card reader.

• 30p (15p if you're an Ecotricity customer) - Electric Highway
  • Uses a pretty rubbish app, but works fairly well.
• 33p - On street lamppost charging from Chargy
• 39p - Shell Recharge / Smoov
  • Tap to pay with credit card. Nothing could be easier! Read my review
• 30p + £1.80 connection fee - GeniePoint
  • prices vary depending on location and speed of charger

Pay by time.

I think this is a hangover from the cost to park usually being in time-based increments.

Pod Point have an excellent app, but a weird charging structure. Some are free, some cost 25p/kWh, some are £1 for 3 hours, and some change their cost throughout the day.

Pre-pay

A fairly annoying option - unless you always use the same charging network. I have a bunch of credit with various apps which I doubt I'll ever use again - and there's no way to reclaim.

• Polar Instant. £10 minimum top up, £1.20 connection charge. Some chargers are free, some cost £1.00 per hour, others are £6.00 for 30 minutes.
  • Verdict? Confusing, complicated, expensive. And the app is crap.

Membership

Are you a member of your local petrol station? No! The idea is ridiculous. You might collect bonus points from them, but why would you ever subscribe to them?

• £39 / month for up to 200kWh - On street lamppost charging from Chargy
• £68 / month for unlimited - On street lamppost charging from Chargy

If you have no charging at home, and can reliably use a lamppost near your home, this could be a decent service.

Worst of both worlds

Source London have a truly user hostile scheme. £4 per month, and then charging per-minute between 3.6p - 9.5p per minute - plus a surcharge in certain parts of London. Or you can pay a one off fee and the pay more per minute. Or PAYG.

Given the PAYG rates are only about 5p a minute more, you'd have to spend 80 minutes a month on charge to make it worth paying the monthly fee.

Confused? I think that's the idea!

What a mess!

Customers, mostly, don't want to interact with competitive capitalism. We aren't Homo Economicus constantly adjusting our behaviour to find the cheapest deal. We just want reasonable service at a reasonable price.

The infrastructure for charging electric cars is mostly here - but the infrastructure for charging money has a long way to go.

Bluetooth

Connects quickly, and no glitches with streaming audio. Call quality was clear, but didn't show caller's photo - which is a shame.

Doesn't show album artwork - so no AVRCP 1.6 support.

I couldn't get it to do a 30-second-skip using the steering wheel buttons. It is next/previous track or nothing.

Android Auto

Allows mirroring of a small number of apps onto the car's main display. Android Auto is basically fine. It shows your GPS on the screen, and some other approved apps. Honestly, it isn't much better than having your phone visible in a holder.

Because it needs a hardwired connection, you need to plug the phone into the car's USB port. Sadly, this is very slow at charging. Annoying, because you'll probably want a faster charger if you're using GPS, streaming podcasts, etc.

Voice Control

Pretty shitty. If you're using the car's voice services, you'll be continually frustrated. Slow and inaccurate.

GPS

Bargain basement GPS. It works, but you'll probably want to use Google maps. There's no live traffic in the Kia, updates to the maps are done yearly, and cost £25! WTF?

The one good thing is that it does show you the speed limit for the road you're on.

Missing mobile app

In a major oversight, there's no mobile services for the car. The Zoe's app was utterly crap - but at least it allowed me to pre-heat the car on demand.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

@KiaUK when will Uvo be available on UK Kia Soul EVs?
Got the car expecting it to be included.

---

Kia UK

@KiaUK

@edent Hi Terence, we have no plans at this time to add UVO compatibility but can pass your feedback on to our product team.

---

That also means there's no API - which is a crying shame.

Missing Tech

There are a number of other curious omissions.

The reversing camera doesn't show the direction of travel. A minor nit, but seems standard in all other vehicles.

No way to default the speed limiter or cruise control. I make heavy use of the speed limiter and I have to activate the function ever time I start the car. Why can't it remember my preferences?

Windscreen wipers aren't automatic. The lights are, but the wipers really should be too.

Power

The car has two "cigar socket" chargers - with variable power outputs - in the front.

The rear has a single socket.

Charging

A mixed bag. The rapid charger is ChaDeMo - rather than the more modern CCS. A bit annoying, depending on which rapids you usually attend.

The slow charger is similarly outdated - it's type 1 rather than the type 2 found on every other car. You can buy adapters, but it's a shame that Kia haven't modernised their charging ports.

The car comes with a standard 3-pin 240V charger, and a type 1 to type 2 Mennekes cable - so you'll be able to charge it at most public charge points.

Verdict

This review may seem fairly negative - but I've deliberately focussed on what annoys me.

I pay £215 per month for this car - and I reckon that's a very fair price. This is obviously the last production run for this version of the Kia Soul EV. I expect future ones will have more modern charging options.

The in-car touchscreen is about as bad as any other modern car. Slow and janky. But car manufacturers just aren't interested in investing in better systems.

You're better off getting a decent Android phone and using that rather than the built-in services.

It's a good little car, the tech is basically adequate for a modern vehicle - but nothing too exciting.

Here's a fairly recent trip in my Renault Zoe: That's a mixture of motorways in the cold, and gentle country paths in the summer. Hopefully typical of a mixed driving style.

It takes 971kWh of electricity to move 3,500 miles. So, what's that in MPG? Let's work it out the long way.

I pay 13p/kWh for my domestic electricity.

£0.13 * 971 = £126

So the cost per mile is...

£126 / 3,500 = 3.6p/mile

Currently, UK petrol prices are about £1.30 per litre. There are 4.55 litres to the UK gallon.

(4.55 litres * £1.30) / 3.6p/mile = 165 MPG

That's a pretty good fuel efficiency!

You can calculate it another way:

Eugene Zaikonnikov🌻💛 ✊✌️

@varjag

Replying to @edent@edent You can take it from the other end. A litre of gasoline has energy density energy of 8-9KWh, then 971KWh translates to 107L. That gives abour 1.99L per 100km, or 141.95 British MPG.

---

Eugene Zaikonnikov🌻💛 ✊✌️

@varjag

Replying to @varjag@edent The 23MPG difference is then the market arbitrage between electricity and fossil fuel costs.

---

Now, this is just my car and my driving style. But the evidence is clear; electric driving is ridiculously cheap!

At the moment, if you're getting 50MPG in a petrol car, fuel costs 12p/mile.

(4.55 * £1.30) / 50 = £0.118

The best fossil-fuel cars get under 100MPG - that's still double the cost per mile of an electric car.

If you can supplement your home charging with solar, like I do, the cost per mile falls even further.

Let's take it for a spin!

Unboxing and first use

Video Samples

Video resolution: 1920x1090 formatted to play back at 1920x1080. Audio: 16KHz AAC stereo - although seems to be mono. Just about good enough to clearly pick up voices in the car. File Size: 100MB per minute.

Low light

Basically fine. Need to be relatively close to see numberplates. Not too much glare.

Daylight

Picks up a reflection of my dashboard, but that's unavoidable. Good wide field of view. Colours a bit washed out.

Security

The default password for all these cameras is 1234567890. It's better than the combination I have on my luggage - but it's not great. Anyone driving near your car will be able to take your photos and videos. They'll be able to stop recording and format the disk. I suggesting changing the password as soon as possible.

The App

As with lots of cheap hardware, the android app is sub-standard. The interface is basically fine - but doesn't look like any Android app I've used before. Parts of it haven't been translated from Chinese.

There's a fair range of options to play with, everything from timestamps to lighting frequency.

It can be a bit confusing to use - I still don't know what "Capacity Allocation" is - but you're only likely to use it to set up the device once.

Annoyingly, you can only view today's videos in the app. There's no way to retrieve the videos recorded in the past. Make sure you download recordings as soon as you need them.

Tech

The camera module is the Sony IMX323. It's an older chip, but one which promises good low-light performance.

There's no battery built in. Instead, the unit comes with two "super capacitors". Basically, they retain enough power to safely finish recording and shut down the unit when the car is turned off.

The whole thing is powered by Grain Media's 8135S - a SoC which provides the video encoding and WiFi.

You'll need to provide your own micro-SD card. I recommend the SanDisk Class 10 32GB.

Finally, there's a small microphone and speaker. The mic is a bit muddy, but it's not intended to pick up anything more that ambient noise and your voice. The speaker lets you know when the camera is recording - and any other status messages. My electric car is silent, and I struggled to hear it.

Verdict

For £50 this is a pretty good dashcam! Video is clear, and low-light performance is adequate. I didn't crash my car while driving (lucky!) so I couldn't test the G-Shock sensor.

If I was going to nit-pick, the only flaws with it are:

• No GPS - would be useful to have photos and videos geostamped for evidence.
• No rear camera - but at this price, you can buy another to stick in the back.
• Quite talkative - I couldn't find away to stop it from chattering about what it was doing!
• Large file sizes can be a pain if you're in a hurry to download them.
• Comes with a short USB lead - but that will depend on the layout of your car.
• App is poor - but you'll rarely use it.

But those are minor points. You switch on the car, the dashcam starts recording. Need a video from it - open the app and download. Simple to set up and simple to use.

Buy the dashcam on Amazon for £49.99.

However! All is not lost. If you log in to your Renault Account - https://www.renault.co.uk/my-account/my-car.html - you'll get details back about your car including its make, model, date of next service, and mileage!

Why isn't this in the regular API? Who knows. But here's how to get it programmatically.

API

The API to call is:

https://www.renault.co.uk/content/renault_prod/en_GB/index/my-account/my-car/jcr:content.getvehicle.json?vin=VF1ABCDE012345678

You will need to stick your own VIN on the end.

That alone won't get you very far - the API requires authentication (not always a given with automotive services!) See bottom of this page for details.

Data

The data you get back is fairly unexciting:

{
    "lastMileageRefresh": "2017-10-15",
    "mileage": 2052,
    "averageMileage": 1973,
    "lastWorkshopVisitMileage": 1853,
    "portalServices": ["ZEPORTAL", "BATTERY", "RLINK"],
    "detailedVehicleName": "Dynamique Nav",
    "registrationNumber": "PK66LTE",
    "firstRegistrationDate": "2016-08-01",
    "electric": true,
    "vehicleManual": {
        "path": "//www.cdn.renault.com/content/dam/Renault/UK/owner-services/private/zoe/X101VE/manual.pdf",
        "size": "5.46MB",
        "extension": "pdf"
    },
    "upcomingServices": [{
        "year": "2018",
        "month": "september",
        "items": [{
            "date": "2018-08-01",
            "code": "13",
            "name": "Replace the cabin filter"
        }, {
            "date": "2018-08-01",
            "code": "185",
            "name": "Z.E. A service"
        }, {
            "date": "2018-08-01",
            "code": "186",
            "name": "Z.E. B service"
        }]
    }, {
        "year": "2019",
        "month": "september",
        "items": [{
            "date": "2019-08-01",
            "code": "13",
            "name": "Replace the cabin filter"
        }, {
            "date": "2019-08-01",
            "code": "180",
            "name": "Replace 12 V battery"
        }]
    }],
    "vin": "VF1ABCDE012345678",
    "vehicleName": "ZOE",
    "smallImage": "https://3dv1.renault.com/ImageFromBookmark?configuration\u003dSKTPOU%2FSSCALL%2FPRLEX1%2FSTANDA%2FB10%2FEA2%2FDD%2FCAREG%2FVT003%2FRET02%2FRALU16%2FDRAP03%2FOV369%2FRDAR02%2FALEVA%2FSOP02C%2FTRNOR%2FLVAVIP%2FLVAREL%2FNAV3G5%2FRAD06D%2FALAR06%2FSAN913%2FBT4MR1\u0026databaseId\u003da3750aea-330d-4c06-91fd-d2ec8d82e763\u0026bookmarkSet\u003dRSITE\u0026bookmark\u003dEXT_34_AV\u0026profile\u003dHELIOS_OWNERSERVICES_SMALL_V2",
    "largeImage": "https://3dv1.renault.com/ImageFromBookmark?configuration\u003dSKTPOU%2FSSCALL%2FPRLEX1%2FSTANDA%2FB10%2FEA2%2FDD%2FCAREG%2FVT003%2FRET02%2FRALU16%2FDRAP03%2FOV369%2FRDAR02%2FALEVA%2FSOP02C%2FTRNOR%2FLVAVIP%2FLVAREL%2FNAV3G5%2FRAD06D%2FALAR06%2FSAN913%2FBT4MR1\u0026databaseId\u003da3750aea-330d-4c06-91fd-d2ec8d82e763\u0026bookmarkSet\u003dRSITE\u0026bookmark\u003dEXT_34_DESSUS\u0026profile\u003dHELIOS_OWNERSERVICES_LARGE",
    "identifier": "X101VE"
}

Authentication

In order to get these data, you will need a username and password for the Renault website. Once logged in, you should be able to inspect the requests your browser makes. All you need is the X-Mapping and JSESSIONID part of the cookie. You'll end up with a request like:

curl 'https://www.renault.co.uk/content/renault_prod/en_GB/index/my-account/my-car/jcr:content.getvehicle.json?vin=VF1ABCDE012345678' -H 'Cookie: X-Mapping-pjobmcgf=123456789; JSESSIONID=abcdefghij;

If you dig around the Renault site, you'll see they use Apigee and helpfully include their clientKey and apiKey in some of the JSON they send to your browser. I'm sure people smarter than me can figure out how to use them.

The Cake Is A Lie

I am not convinced that this is live data. It looks to me like Renault are using your average yearly mileage and extrapolating what today's mileage will be. But it is better than nothing.

edent's Car

@edent_car

🔋 100%
🚗 76 miles
🔌 Plugged in
⚡ Not charging
⚠ Secured and Locked
#RenaultZOE

---

All these API calls can be found by using the Renault ZE Services website. I am indebted to this German blog post for kicking off this work. I'd also like to thank Renault for their "esoteric" use of JavaScript!

What's Available?

This API is fairly limited, here's what you can do with it:

• See battery status, range, charging status.
• Start preconditioning
• See preconditioning history
• See and set charging schedule.
• See charging history

Getting started

First, register with Renault ZE Services. This will give you a username and password.

Secondly, you'll need to get your VIN and API token. This can be obtained by posting the username and password to Renault. For example:

curl \
   -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
   -X POST \
   -d '{"username":"you@example.com","password":"P4ssw0rd"}' \
   https://www.services.renault-ze.com/api/user/login`

This will get you back some JSON with your API tokens. Here's an example:

{
    "token": "AAAA",
    "refresh_token": "BBBB",
    "user": {
        "id": "CCCC",
        "locale": "en_GB",
        "country": "GB",
        "timezone": "Europe/London",
        "email": "you@example.com",
        "first_name": "Terence",
        "last_name": "Eden",
        "phone_number": "+447700900123",
        "vehicle_details": {
            "timezone": "Europe/London",
            "VIN": "VVVV",
            "activation_code": "GGGG",
            "phone_number": "+447700900123"
        },
        "scopes": ["BATTERY_CHARGE_STATUS",
                   "BATTERY_CHARGE_HISTORY",
                   "BATTERY_CHARGE_REMOTE_ACTIVATION",
                   "BATTERY_CHARGE_SCHEDULING",
                   "AC_REMOTE_CONTROL",
                   "BATTERY_CHARGE_LOWALERT"],
        "active_account": "DDDD",
        "associated_vehicles": [{
            "VIN": "VVVV",
            "activation_code": "GGGG",
            "user_id": "XXXX"
        }],
        "gdc_uid": "YYYY"
    }
}

Battery Status

Let's start with the battery. We need to use your token and VIN from above.

curl \
   -H "Authorization: Bearer AAAA" \
   "https://www.services.renault-ze.com/api/vehicle/VVVV/battery"

This gets us:

{
    "charging": false,
    "plugged": true,
    "charge_level": 100,
    "remaining_range": 124.0,
    "last_update": 1476472742000,
    "charging_point": "INVALID"
}

A few point to note. The remaining_range is in Kilometres. The last_update is a Unix timestamp.

Preconditioning

The Zoe can be set to warm-up or cool down depending on the last temperate you set in the car. It will also blast the front window de-mister. The process takes five minutes, so you can set it shortly before you need to set off. Preconditioning will only work when the car's battery is above 45%.

Precondition Now

curl \
   -H "Authorization: Bearer AAAA" \
   "https://www.services.renault-ze.com/api/vehicle/VVVV/air-conditioning"

This command does not return any value. There is also no way to cancel the command remotely - you have to physically enter the car and turn it off.

Precondition Later

If you know that you want to leave at a specific time, you can set the car to precondition at a set time.

curl \
   -H "Authorization: Bearer AAAA" \
   -H 'Content-Type: application/json;charset=UTF-8' \
   --data-binary '{"start":"1753"}' \
   'https://www.services.renault-ze.com/api/vehicle/VVVV/air-conditioning/scheduler'

As far as I can tell, the start time is when you want the conditioning to start - not when you want it to be finished.

There is no way to cancel a precondition.

Preconditioning Last Status

Want to see if the preconditioning message was received by the car correctly?

curl \
   -H "Authorization: Bearer AAAA" \
   "https://www.services.renault-ze.com/api/vehicle/VVVV/air-conditioning/last"

This returns information about who or what sent the request:

{
    "date": 1476538293000,
    "type": "USER_REQUEST",
    "result": "SUCCESS"
}

Preconditioning History

You can also see how often your car has been preconditioned.

curl \
   -H "Authorization: Bearer AAAA" \
   https://www.services.renault-ze.com/api/vehicle/VVVV/air-conditioning?begin=1016&end=1016

[{
    "date": 1476165377000,
    "type": "USER_REQUEST",
    "result": "ERROR"
}, {
    "date": 1476079325000,
    "type": "CAR_NOTIFICATION",
    "result": "ERROR"
}, {
    "date": 1476079270000,
    "type": "USER_REQUEST",
    "result": "SUCCESS"
}, {
    "date": 1476079266000,
    "type": "CAR_NOTIFICATION",
    "result": "SUCCESS"
}]

Start Charging

You may have set your Zoe only to charge at specific times - perhaps to take advantage of cheap rate electricity. You can override this by issuing the charge command.

curl \
   -H "Authorization: Bearer AAAA" \
   https://www.services.renault-ze.com/api/vehicle/VVVV/charge

Again, this won't return a response. If your battery cannot be charged, you'll be notified via email or SMS depending on the preference you set up when you registered.

Charging History

curl \
   -H "Authorization: Bearer AAAA" \
   https://www.services.renault-ze.com/api/vehicle/VVVV/charge/history?begin=1016&end=1016

The begin and end take MMYY as their arguments. That is, if you want October 2016 you need to use 1016.

This returns an array, the most recent charging session at the top.

[{
    "date": 1476538527000,
    "type": "START_NOTIFICATION",
    "charging_point": "SLOW",
    "charge_level": 99,
    "remaining_autonomy": 119
}, {
    "date": 1476472727000,
    "type": "END_NOTIFICATION",
    "charging_point": "INVALID",
    "charge_level": 100,
    "remaining_autonomy": 124
}, {
    "date": 1476462129000,
    "type": "START_NOTIFICATION",
    "charging_point": "ACCELERATED",
    "charge_level": 34,
    "remaining_autonomy": 42,
    "remaining_time": 10500000
}]

The remaining_autonomy is, again, the range in Km. The remaining time is expressed in milliseconds. So 10500000 is the equivalent of 2 hours and 55 minutes.

Notifications

You can use the website to set up notifications. For example, if there is a problem with your charge, Renault will send you an SMS. This API call lets you see what notifications you have set up.

Set Notifications

curl \
   -H "Authorization: Bearer AAAA" \
   -X PUT \
   -H 'Content-Type: application/json;charset=UTF-8' \
   --data-binary '{"battery_status":"EMAIL","charge_start":"SMS","charge_end":"SMS","charge_problem":"SMS","low_battery":"SMS","low_battery_reminder":"SMS","do_not_disturb":null}' \
   'https://www.services.renault-ze.com/api/vehicle/VVVV/settings/notification'

You can change any of the options with EMAIL or SMS.

You can set a "do not disturb" option. This will suppress all notifications during specific times. Sadly, this is a fairly blunt instrument - you can only set one time which then is enforced every day.

In the above example, change "do_not_disturb":null to

"do_not_disturb":{"start":"1710","end":"1811"}}'

This will give you peace between 5:10pm and 6:11pm.

See Notifications

You can use the website to set up notifications. For example, if there is a problem with your charge, Renault will send you an SMS. This API call lets you see what notifications you have set up.

curl \
   -H "Authorization: Bearer AAAA" \
   https://www.services.renault-ze.com/api/vehicle/VVVV/settings/notification

This returns:

{
    "battery_status": "EMAIL",
    "charge_start": "NONE",
    "charge_end": "SMS",
    "charge_problem": "SMS",
    "low_battery": "SMS",
    "low_battery_reminder": "SMS",
    "do_not_disturb": null
}

Charging Times

The Zoe's charging calendar is, sadly, crap. You can say "charge between these times" but you can only have one schedule per day. So if you only want the car to charge between 0300-0700 and 1800-2200 on Mondays - you're out of luck.

It also seemed to force me to set a schedule for every day.

This is a multi-stage process.

Create a schedule

In this example, I'm setting the charging to be active on Monday from 0100 for 1 hour and 15 minutes. All other days start at different times, but last only for 15 minutes. All start times must be at 00, 15, 30, 45 minutes. All durations must be in increments of 15 minutes.

curl \
   -H 'Authorization: Bearer AAAA' \
   -X PUT \
   --data-binary '{"optimized_charge":false,"mon":{"start":"0100","duration":"0115"},"tue":{"start":"0200","duration":"0015"},"wed":{"start":"0300","duration":"0015"},"thu":{"start":"1600","duration":"0015"},"fri":{"start":"1900","duration":"0015"},"sat":{"start":"1400","duration":"0015"},"sun":{"start":"1200","duration":"0015"}}' \
   'https://www.services.renault-ze.com/api/vehicle/VVVV/charge/scheduler/offboard'

View the schedule

Let's make sure the schedule has been sent correctly

curl \
   -H 'Authorization: Bearer AAAA' \
   'https://www.services.renault-ze.com/api/vehicle/VVVV/charge/scheduler/onboard'

Returned - hopefully! - is the schedule:

{
    "enabled": false,
    "schedule": {
        "mon": {
            "start": "0100",
            "duration": "0115"
        },
        "tue": {
            "start": "0200",
            "duration": "0015"
        },
        "wed": {
            "start": "0300",
            "duration": "0015"
        },
        "thu": {
            "start": "1600",
            "duration": "0015"
        },
        "fri": {
            "start": "1900",
            "duration": "0015"
        },
        "sat": {
            "start": "1400",
            "duration": "0015"
        },
        "sun": {
            "start": "1200",
            "duration": "0015"
        }
    }
}

Deploy the schedule

Be default, the schedule isn't activated. It needs to be "deployed" in order to send it to the car.

curl \
   -H 'Authorization: Bearer AAAA' \
   -X POST \
   'https://www.services.renault-ze.com/api/vehicle/VVVV/charge/scheduler/offboard/deploy'

Deactivate the schedule

If you deactivate the schedule then the car will charge whenever it is plugged in.

curl \
   -H 'Authorization: Bearer AAAA' \
   -X PUT \
   --data-binary '{"enabled":false}' \
   'https://www.services.renault-ze.com/api/vehicle/VVVV/charge/scheduler/onboard'

That's all folks?

There are a few other API calls - mostly around registering and removing vehicles, and updating personal details. I've not detailed these because I didn't want to test them with my live account.

What's Missing?

Sadly, the Renault API is quite poor compared to BMW's API. Here's what I'd love to see:

• Vehicle status - doors locked, headlights on.
• Efficiency - last journey, total.
• Mileage.
• Physical location.

The End Result

edent's Car

@edent_car

🔋 100%
🚗 76 miles
🔌 Plugged in
⚡ Not charging
⚠ Secured and Locked
#RenaultZOE

---

Further Reading

A living copy of this documentation is available on my GitHub account.

The UK's charging infrastructure is patchy at best. At worst it is a confusing mess of incompatible standards, over-priced chargers, and woefully inadequate central planning.

The only time I had to hire a regular car was when ferrying my in-laws to the airport. The i3 is spacious - but not big enough for four adults and seven suitcases!

I'm firmly committed to EVs (electric vehicles), but my next car won't be an i3. In fact, I think it is unlikely that I'll ever drive a BMW again.

Cost

The i3 is a company car. My old employer paid for the lease, and I paid the tax on the benefit I receive. In the UK the tax rates for electric vehicles are incredibly low - so I was isolated from the capital cost of the vehicle. There are also discounts on the London congestion charge.

The i3 was stupidly expensive. It's a high-tech bit of kit, but I got tired of BMW trying to extract every extra penny out of me.

• Want a charging cable for your car? That's extra!
• Reversing camera and sensors? Extra cost!
• Adaptive Cruise Control? It's pretty nifty but you have to pay to get the entire interior upgraded just to get the steering wheel with the correct buttons.

Most other EVs come with those things as standard. BMW say that most i3 drivers are new to the BMW brand. That's certainly true in my case. But BMW's attitude to selling cars hasn't caught up with its high tech manufacturing. A bewildering array of options, hidden behind a website which barely works, each priced based on numbers plucked from thin air.

Getting the car was, frankly, a nasty experience. But it pales in comparison to the real horrors the car has in store.

Crappy Software

Several of the i3's features fail to work.

• Adaptive Cruise Control is meant to keep your distance from the car in front. It doesn't work if the sun is too low in the sky. Like, you know, when you're commuting. It also randomly fails with an alarming "bong" noise, if the screen mists up or it starts raining. Which brings me on to...
• The automatic windscreen wipers aren't very sensitive. Maybe it doesn't rain in Germany, but in the UK wipers are a necessity. Sometimes they just wouldn't react to the buckets of rain falling onto the car. Still, at least the car is easy to park, right?
• The auto-parallel parking is... eccentric. I know I'm lazy for not parking myself, but that's why I'm paying silly money for the car. Sometimes the sensors wouldn't see the gap to park in, sometimes the car would hit the kerb, sometimes the parking would stop mid-manoeuvre. Oh well, at least the GPS gets you where you're going, eh?
• The navigation software was a disappointment. I was expecting buttery-smooth 30fps animation - but I got a shuddery mess. The interface was painful to use and updates came through a paid for USB stick. I stuck with the free Google Maps app on my phone and had a much nicer experience. Even the navigation prompts came through Bluetooth. Mostly.
• Bluetooth is too hard for BMW. I got bored with all the little niggles with the entertainment system - scroll wheels which wouldn't work, lack of cover art, random sound drop outs. Small issues, yes, but when you're paying this much for a car, you expect a better service.
• Updates are woefully delivered. There's a 3G modem in the car, but you have to update manually with yet another USB stick.
• I've detailed just how bad the i3's web browser is before - so I didn't get that particular option.
• There is a mobile app. It's slow, poorly localised, and features some truly hideous design decisions.
• It is meant to send email alerts when charging is interrupted or the battery is low. The mails are poorly designed and sometimes come hours after they would have been useful.

Luckily I never had cause to use the pedestrian detection feature, but I have severe doubts that it would have performed as intended.

The i3 is an amazing car to drive, but it is a terrible car to use.

The Drive

Amazing. Seriously. It left me with a smile on my face after every drive. It is as silent as a ninja and as fast as... err... another ninja!

The steering responded to the merest touch of the wheel and the car leaped forward at the lights and left others in its dust. The i3 uses regenerative braking - as soon as you lift off the accelerator pedal, the car begins to slow down as it harvests kinetic energy to recharge the battery. Driven correctly, you should never need to touch the brake pedal.

With all that said, the ride is very stiff and bumpy. Great on motorways, but on the more dilapidated streets it feels like running in plimsolls. Maybe the average BMW owner is too rich to drive on anything but the finest surfaces?

I put 12,000 miles on the i3 in a year. Without a doubt this car is the quickest, most fun, and most pleasant drive there is.

Charging

The vast majority of my charging was done at home. With a 7kW charger fitted I was able to go from empty to full in 4 hours. Parked overnight and full in the morning. Perfect!

My employers were generous enough to install some free chargers at work. These were supplied by PodPoint and, I'm sorry to say, not very reliable. We were never sure if it was a poor installation, an incompatible car, or simply defective units - but the points would fail and leave some people limping along to the next nearest point. I was lucky - the 80 mile range of the i3 was enough to get me to work and back on a single charge.

When I started driving the i3 a year ago, there were only a few EVs in our car park - now it is full of Leafs, Outlanders, and the occasional Tesla. They're now putting in several regular plug sockets. If you're going to be at work for 8 hours, it doesn't really matter how fast your car charges, does it?

And so we come on to the sorry state of public charging. In a sensible world, councils and businesses would stick up free charging spots to encourage EVs. The cost of electricity is negligible (less than £3 to fill one up), but you could always recoup the money with a contactless credit card reader. Easy, no?

No. Instead we have a dozen incompatible charging schemes, each of which requires their own RFID card or mobile app. Got a card for charging in London? It won't work when charging in Norwich! Want £2 worth of electricity? Download our app, register, and pay £6. Plus parking costs!

That's before we get on to broken points, incompatible charging sockets, and petrol cars parking in front of the chargers. GAH!

On the plus side, the "Rapid" chargers will take the i3 from empty to 80% in 30 minutes. Frankly, after a few hours of driving, having a 30 minute mandatory break for food and rest is probably a good idea!

If you only drive within the range of your EV, it's a beautiful and stress free experience. If you have to rely on the vagaries of the UK charging network... well, you better start collecting a wide range of RFID cards and hope for the best!

I cheated and got the i3 Rex. It has a small petrol tank (9 litres) which can recharge the battery as you drive. Over the year, I think I filled it up about 6 times. Half of those were because I couldn't be bothered to wait for a charge, the rest because of charging failures.

What's Next?

As I change jobs, the i3 is going back. I looked at getting a replacement for my personal use - but I just couldn't justify the price. I've gone for a Renault Zoe - it's not as glamorous, but has a longer range and costs a fraction of the i3.

There are several EVs which cost less than the i3 and come with more features. Perhaps the Zoe's software won't be any better (it couldn't be any worse) - but at least I won't feel like I'm being charged a premium price for a second rate product.

The i3 is a disappointment simply because it shows so much promise. It steers itself in a traffic jam and can park itself! But you're never confident that the software won't crap out at an inconvenient time.

EVs are the future of personal driving. The cost is approaching parity with petrol cars. The range is already suitable for the majority of drivers. Charging at home and work solves most of the problems of poor infrastructure. The software is getting better all the time.

The i3 is a tantalising glimpse at what mass market EVs could be - but it falls short of glory.

In my blog post about BMW's unencrypted software updates, I said:

Judging from the files, it would appear that the infotainment system is made by Magneti Marelli with components by Wind River, AutoSAR, and Nvidia Tegra. Looking at the copious mentions of systemd and freedesktop it's a Linux system!

Hmmm... I wonder if they're respecting the GPL...?

I want to make it clear that, at the time, I had no evidence to suggest that any Open Source Software was being used in my vehicle. It was idle speculation on my part.

Anyway, some kind Internet stranger decided to fire off an email to BMW Australia demanding access to the source code. The customer service agents refused.

...customer must provide the 7 digit VIN and accept the usage rights agreement. Part of the usage rights agreement states that the software is protected by copyright and BMW is the sole owner. So in this case it is not subject to the requirements of a "Public" licence

BMW Australia

It would be an exaggeration to say "at which point all hell broke loose" - but there were some sternly worded tweets and comments condemning BMW for their abuse of Free Software.

Here's the thing - contacting customer services like that was entirely the wrong approach. Customer services aren't trained for the 0.001% of people who might be interested in an esoteric matter of legal licensing. Crying foul because a minimum wage rep didn't understand an obscure technical reference is counter productive.

A quick search shows a BMW Open Source site which is highly active. An email to them, or to BMW's head office, or their legal team, would have generated a far more useful reply.

As it happens, someone within BMW contacted me to explain where the Open Source Licences are within the vehicle. I'll be honest, they are well hidden - and not referenced in the user manual as far as I could see - but they are there.

Here's proof:

Now, this is a somewhat of a "beware of the leopard" situation, I grant you. But, somewhere in that mass of text is the email address you need to contact if you want copies of the code.

So, I've dropped BMW an email and will update you if/when I hear back. They may not respond - in which case we can heap opprobrium upon them - but let's give them a chance rather than flailing about and calling every scratch a palpable hit, eh?

Update! I've received a response from BMW.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

As a follow up to last week's blog post.
BMW are going to ship me a copy of the source code.
shkspr.mobi/blog/2016/03/b… pic.x.com/kwa0wfcgcr

---

I've sent them my details and will report back on what they send me.

We used to have separate categories of device: washing machines, VCRs, phones, cars, but now we just have computers in different cases. For example, modern cars are computers we put our bodies in and Boeing 747s are flying Solaris boxes, whereas hearing aids and pacemakers are computers we put in our body.

The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing - Cory Doctorow Emphasis added.

The i3 has numerous software defects. Despite having a capable 3G modem, all major software updates have to be performed by an authorised dealer. That means booking your car in and waiting for a day or two for the update to take place.

So, that's the major software updates, what about the minor ones? It turns out that the entertainment system can be updated by anyone with a USB stick and access to your vehicle.

The BMW Group allows part of the vehicle software to be updated, to enable compatibility of the latest tested Bluetooth or USB devices in the vehicle. This offer is available for selected vehicles manufactured after March 2010.

You can perform this software update yourself. To do so, all you need is a standard USB memory stick with sufficient memory capacity.

BMW Connected Drive - Software Updates

The website doesn't use SSL. I mean, everything is unencrypted including the software download!

The user enters their Vehicle Identification number, it is sent across to an unencrypted API.

http://www.bmw.com/_common/shared/owners/bluetooth/jsp/serviceV2.jsp
   ?op=getVINData
   &requestType=bluetooth
   &language=en
   &vin=1234567
   &domain=kisu-check

The user is asked to agree to a "usage right agreement" - but it's not necessary; the software is available to anyone without requiring authentication.

For example, the i3's software is available at

• http://www.bmw.com/_common/shared/owners/bluetooth/bin/UPD07012.bin

No need to guess a VIN or agree to any terms. Just click and download.

A look through the various BMW forums shows that software updates for different cars all follow a similar pattern.

Why Is This A Bad Thing™?

Because the software download goes via http rather than https, it is theoretically possible for an attacker to modify the file before it gets to you.

One would hope that the firmware is cryptographically signed so that it cannot be maliciously modified - but given BMW's fairly poor record on securing their cars (original in German), it's not guaranteed.

OK, what's the worst that could happen with a phony software update for a glorified car radio?

My friend Marc Rogers successfully hacked the Tesla Model S in part using the car's infotainment system. It turns out that entertainment systems often talk to the rest of the car via a CAN bus. If the car isn't fully secured, it is theoretically possible that a rogue internal component would be able to endanger the car and its passengers.

There's a secondary issue - car manufacturers are training people to stick untrusted USB sticks into their cars.

When FIAT had to update the software on 1.4 million cars, they opted to send USB sticks in the post to affected drivers.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Oh, a *secure* USB.
There's no way that could be malicious…
#antipattern pic.x.com/kqhtw51zq6

---

If you receive a USB stick in the post, how can you be sure that it doesn't contain malicious software?

Hopefully, the car should reject any unauthorised tampering - but we all know that security measures can be bypassed by sufficiently motivated adversaries.

Decoding The Firmware

Alas, dear reader, here is where I must confess my ignorance. Decompiling firmware is way outside my area of expertise. If anyone with greater skills can investigate further, I'd be grateful.

Firstly, a quick run of binwalk gives us:

POSIX tar archive (GNU), owner user name: "01E40_110_005_010.xml"

Renaming the .bin to .tar allows us to extract the 7 firmware files and an XML file.

Within the XML, we find: <SWIP digalg="sha256" signalg="sha256withRSA" version="0.3.6" ... Which would indicate that the software is self-signed and probably secure against forgery.

Each of the firmware files contains a file called "bungstabelle.sgbm" which appears to be another cryptographic signature.

Judging from the files, it would appear that the infotainment system is made by Magneti Marelli with components by Wind River, AutoSAR, and Nvidia Tegra. Looking at the copious mentions of systemd and freedesktop it's a Linux system!

Hmmm... I wonder if they're respecting the GPL...?

The firmware isn't encrypted - so anyone can read the code and comments - but it does appear to be signed which makes it unlikely that a user could accidentally install corrupted software.

The Five Star Automotive Cyber Safety Program suggests to manufacturers that:

While updating is a necessary capability, an insecure update design could facilitate adversaries or trigger accidents. Authenticity and quality verification preserves the integrity of the updates and leads to a safer mechanism that can prevent digital tampering or unexpected failures.

From my limited understanding of the way the firmware is designed, it should be robust enough to prevent malicious users from infecting it with anything nasty.

However, given BMW's troubled history with HTTPS, I think it would be sensible for them to ensure all their software was delivered securely.

How much does it really cost to drive an electric car? Well, I've had my BMW i3 for a few months, so I thought I'd crunch the numbers.

As part of the UK Government's OLEV scheme, there's a subsidy for installing car charging points at home. One of the conditions of the subsidy is that a smart meter is installed which reports back details about the energy used to charge the car (aside: wonder if that's available as Open Data?). This means I know exactly how many kWh the car has gobbled up at home.

My car tweets its stats (thanks to some hacking).

edent's Car

@edent_car

🚗 5 miles in 24 minutes
Efficiency: 4.47 miles/kWh
🔋 100% (78 miles)
🔌 Finished (Full)
⚠ CHARGING_DONE
4,118 miles total
#BMWi3

---

I'm with Ovo Energy (join Ovo and get a £25 Amazon Gift Card). They charge me £0.1308 / kWh.

MATHS!

517kWh * £0.1308 = £67.62

£67.62 / 4,118 miles = 1.6 pence per mile

ZOMG! That's half as much as I originally predicted! For comparison, driving a fairly efficient hybrid was costing me 10.4 pence per mile.

I also have solar panels - they've been performing pretty well this year.

I got the car in September, between then and now they've generated ~930kWh. A little under double my car's consumption. So, from a certain point of view, I've been driving on free sunshine ☺

Reality

OK... So that's the costs to me, but what are the real costs?

There was one major up-front capital cost (which can be amortised) - installing a charging point in the garage. The normal cost is ~£200 but we had to dig a small trench in my garden for the wiring, so it came to around £300. The fine folk at EV Charging Solutions did a beautiful job of installing everything.

My i3 has a 9 litre petrol tank which kicks in if the battery is getting low. So far I've put in less than a fiver of unleaded.

There are a number of free charging networks in the UK. I occasionally use Ecotricity's Electric Highway for rapid charging on motorways. Twice I've used Source London's chargers in car parks - that cost £5 for membership but is free for now.

But, the real subsidy comes from my employers. They're keen on reducing their employees' impact on the environment, so they offer free chaging at work. I can do my 75 mile round trip to work without charging, but more often than not I plug in for a boost (when the Pod-Points aren't broken).

As I'm an excellent driver (!) I average around 4.2 miles per kWh.

4,118 miles / 4.2mi/kWh = 980 kWh used

So I charge a little over half the time at home and the rest for free. If I were paying the domestic rate for the electricity, it would cost me around 3p per mile.

Final Thoughts

Electric cars are great! If you can afford the up-front price, the running costs are ridiculously low.

The only fly in the ointment is the proposed costs from some of the free networks. We've already started to see companies like ChargeMaster introduce minimum fees of £1.20 for their "free" network - that starts to make charging uneconomical.

Julian Kemp

@julkemp1

Sad to see @ChargemasterPlc admin fees for "free" EVcharging @asda. Not viable for a top up. #ukcharge @OLEVgovuk pic.x.com/7ubgsdqxhv

---

The i3 costs around £2.50 to fill from empty to full on a domestic tariff. How much extra is it worth paying to charge away from home? At the moment, most of the networks are staying quiet on whether they'll charge per minute, per kWh, per connection, or something else.

Evfiretrax

@evfiretrax

Replying to @ElecHighway@ElecHighway @snfosberry @aminorjourney When will you start charging and announce your prices?

---

GRIDSERVE Electric Highway

@ElecHighway

Replying to @evfiretrax@evfiretrax @snfosberry @aminorjourney That decision has not been made yet

---

As more houses get solar panels and take advantage of free power from the sky, asking people to pay a premium for an electrical connection becomes an increasingly hard sell.

Look at it this way, if you had an oil-well in your back garden, how much would you be prepared to pay for petrol at the pump?

I'd love to have it tweet its driving efficiency, or upload its location to my server, or let me turn on its air-conditioning when the temperature gets too warm - there are a hundred interesting things to do with the car's data. The official app has some of these features - but is slow, ugly, and a pain to use.

BMW used to have an API available for hackathons, but they shut it down.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Replying to @BMW@BMW I've just got an i3! Is the Developer API open yet? data.hackthedrive.com/learn looks closed :-(

---

BMW

@BMW

Replying to @edent@edent Access to the API is not possible. The API was accessible during #HacktheDrive Hackathon, but not anymore. data.hackthedrive.com

---

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Replying to @BMW_UK@BMW_UK good morning! I've just got an i3. I would love to develop apps for it. Is there an API for ConnectedDrive?

---

BMW UK

@BMW_UK

Replying to @edent@edent Hi Terence, due to a number of factors we can't open our API's up to develop for our i3 platform at present..

---

Right! Only one thing to do - HACK THE MAINFRAME*!

Aim

The ultimate aim is to get access to all the car's functions which are exposed by the API - so I can do something like this:

edent's Car

@edent_car

🚗 4 miles in 13 minutes
Efficiency: 5.36 miles/kWh
🔋 53% (37 miles)
🔌 Unplugged
⚠ Shutdown Secured
2,160 miles total

---

Equipment

For this relatively simple bit of work you will need...

• A BMW i3.
• An account with BMW's ConnectedDrive.
• The BMW i Remote App for Android. (I'm using the non-US version.)
• An Android phone or tablet.
• A way to intercept encrypted communications leaving your device - I recommend Packet Capture by Grey Shirts.

With Packet Capture installed, close all other apps, start the logging, then log in to the i Remote app. Click around on a few functions, then flip back to the Packet Capture app.

You'll see a bunch of API calls which have been captured.

Click on one and you'll see the full API call, plus the JSON response. I've stripped out some of my personal details.

The most important thing you'll need is the Authorization: Bearer token. This is a 32 character alphanumeric string.

Description

The latest version can always be found on GitHub.

These API calls are designed to allow you to interact with your BMW i3. They were reverse engineered from the official BMW i Remote Android app.

Your use of these API calls is entirely at your own risk. They are neither officially provided nor sanctioned.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Servers

There are three API servers.

• https://b2vapi.bmwgroup.cn:8592 China
• https://b2vapi.bmwgroup.us USA
• https://b2vapi.bmwgroup.com Europe / Rest of World

Authorisation

In order to authenticate against the API you will need to be registered on BMW's Connected Drive service.

You will need:

1. Your ConnectedDrive registered email address.
2. Your ConnectedDrive registered password.
3. The i Remote API Key.
4. The i Remote API Secret.

You can get the i Remote details from either decompiling the Android App or from intercepting communications between your phone and the BMW server. This is left as an exercise for the reader ☺

Firstly, we use Basic authentication. That means taking the API Key and Secret and Base64 encoding them.

So key:secret becomes a2V5OnNlY3JldA==

We also need to send the following parameters as

• Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded

 grant_type=password
&username=whatever%40example.com
&password=p4ssw0rd
&scope=remote_services+vehicle_data

Here's how to do it with curl:

curl \
   -H "Authorization: Basic a2V5OnNlY3JldA==" \
   -H "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded" \
   -d "grant_type=password&username=whatever%40example.com&password=p4ssw0rd&scope=remote_services+vehicle_data" \
   "https://b2vapi.bmwgroup.com/webapi/oauth/token/"

If everything has worked, you should get back the following JSON:

{
  "access_token": "RCQ1hLP4AFaUBW9BjcPUN3i4WgkwF90R",
  "token_type": "Bearer",
  "expires_in": 28800,
  "refresh_token": "7WgKmEJ2kD1ydl9Hefp01eS8qDGzKnzjeORpA6vtsoFIEanz",
  "scope": "vehicle_data remote_services"
}

You must include

• Authorization: Bearer RCQ1hLP4AFaUBW9BjcPUN3i4WgkwF90R

in your headers with every request.

The expires_in is in seconds - giving you 8 hours before you have to renew the token.

I've no idea what the refresh_token is for. Once the access_token expires, you can simply re-authenticate and gain a new one.

API

You must include

• Authorization: Bearer RCQ1hLP4AFaUBW9BjcPUN3i4WgkwF90R

in your headers with every request.

Get Vehicle Data

• /webapi/v1/user/vehicles/
  • Remember to include the Authorization: Bearer header.

The most important thing here is the VIN - Vehicle Identification Number. You'll need that for all the other API calls as well as the Authorization Bearer.

Response

{
    "vehicleStatus": {
        "vin": "WAB1C23456V123456",
        "mileage": 1234,
        "updateReason": "VEHICLE_SHUTDOWN_SECURED",
        "updateTime": "2015-10-30T18:45:04+0100",
        "doorDriverFront": "CLOSED",
        "doorDriverRear": "CLOSED",
        "doorPassengerFront": "CLOSED",
        "doorPassengerRear": "CLOSED",
        "windowDriverFront": "CLOSED",
        "windowDriverRear": "CLOSED",
        "windowPassengerFront": "CLOSED",
        "windowPassengerRear": "CLOSED",
        "trunk": "CLOSED",
        "rearWindow": "INVALID",
        "convertibleRoofState": "INVALID",
        "hood": "CLOSED",
        "doorLockState": "SECURED",
        "parkingLight": "OFF",
        "positionLight": "OFF",
        "remainingFuel": 8.9,
        "remainingRangeElectric": 73,
        "remainingRangeElectricMls": 45,
        "remainingRangeFuel": 126,
        "remainingRangeFuelMls": 78,
        "maxRangeElectric": 134,
        "maxRangeElectricMls": 83,
        "fuelPercent": 99,
        "maxFuel": 9,
        "connectionStatus": "DISCONNECTED",
        "chargingStatus": "INVALID",
        "chargingLevelHv": 58,
        "lastChargingEndReason": "UNKNOWN",
        "lastChargingEndResult": "FAILED",
        "position": {
            "lat": 51.123456,
            "lon": -1.2345678,
            "heading": 211,
            "status": "OK"
        },
        "internalDataTimeUTC": "2015-10-30T18:47:44"
    }
}

Values

• mileage is in Km.
• remainingFuel is in Litres.
• maxRangeElectric is in Km.
• maxRangeElectricMls is in miles.
• chargingLevelHv is the percentage of charge left in the (High voltage?) battery.
• maxFuel is in Litres.
• heading is in degrees.

Valid chargingStatuses appear to be:

• CHARGING
• ERROR
• FINISHED_FULLY_CHARGED
• FINISHED_NOT_FULL
• INVALID
• NOT_CHARGING
• WAITING_FOR_CHARGING

Valid connectionStatuses appear to be:

• CHARGING_DONE
• CHARGING_INTERRUPED [sic]
• CHARGING_PAUSED
• CHARGIN_STARTED [sic]
• CYCLIC_RECHARGING
• DOOR_STATE_CHANGED
• NO_CYCLIC_RECHARGING
• NO_LSC_TRIGGER
• ON_DEMAND
• PREDICTION_UPDATE
• TEMPORARY_POWER_SUPPLY_FAILURE
• UNKNOWN
• VEHICLE_MOVING
• VEHICLE_SECURED
• VEHICLE_SHUTDOWN
• VEHICLE_SHUTDOWN_SECURED
• VEHICLE_UNSECURED

Get Last Trip

Shows the details about your most recent trip.

• /webapi/v1/user/vehicles/:VIN/statistics/lastTrip
  • Where :VIN is your vehicle's VIN.
  • Remember to include the Authorization: Bearer header.

Response

{
   "lastTrip":{
      "efficiencyValue":0.53,
      "totalDistance":141,
      "electricDistance":100.1,
      "avgElectricConsumption":16.6,
      "avgRecuperation":2,
      "drivingModeValue":0,
      "accelerationValue":0.39,
      "anticipationValue":0.81,
      "totalConsumptionValue":0.79,
      "auxiliaryConsumptionValue":0.66,
      "avgCombinedConsumption":1.9,
      "electricDistanceRatio":71,
      "savedFuel":0,
      "date":"2015-12-01T20:44:00+0100",
      "duration":124
   }
}

Values

Distances appear to be in Kilometres rather than miles, so be sure to adjust accordingly. Multiply by 0.621371 to get miles.

• totalDistance is in Km.
• electricDistance is in Km.
• avgElectricConsumption is in kWh/100Km.
• avgRecuperation is in kWh/100Km.
• duration is in minutes.

To convert kWh/100Km to Miles/kWh.

1 / (0.01609344 * avgElectricConsumption)

Get Charging Times

Shows when the car is scheduled to charge.

• /webapi/v1/user/vehicles/:VIN/chargingprofile
  • Where :VIN is your vehicle's VIN.
  • Remember to include the Authorization: Bearer header.

Response

{
   "weeklyPlanner":{
      "climatizationEnabled":true,
      "chargingMode":"DELAYED_CHARGING",
      "chargingPreferences":"CHARGING_WINDOW",
      "timer1":{
         "departureTime":"07:30",
         "timerEnabled":true,
         "weekdays":[
            "MONDAY"
         ]
      },
      "timer2":{
         "departureTime":"13:00",
         "timerEnabled":false,
         "weekdays":[
            "SATURDAY"
         ]
      },
      "timer3":{
         "departureTime":"08:00",
         "timerEnabled":false,
         "weekdays":[

         ]
      },
      "overrideTimer":{
         "departureTime":"07:30",
         "timerEnabled":false,
         "weekdays":[
            "MONDAY"
         ]
      },
      "preferredChargingWindow":{
         "enabled":true,
         "startTime":"05:02",
         "endTime":"17:31"
      }
   }
}

Values

• departureTime appears to be the car's local time.

Get Vehicle Destinations

Shows the destinations you've previously sent to the car.

• /webapi/v1/user/vehicles/:VIN/destinations
  • Where :VIN is your vehicle's VIN.
  • Remember to include the Authorization: Bearer header.

Response

{
   "destinations":[
      {
         "lat":51.53053283691406,
         "lon":-0.08362331241369247,
         "country":"UNITED KINGDOM",
         "city":"LONDON",
         "street":"PITFIELD STREET",
         "type":"DESTINATION",
         "createdAt":"2015-09-25T08:06:11+0200"
      }
   ]
}

Values

• An array of locations.

Get All Trip Details

Shows the statistics for all trips taken in the vehicle.

• /webapi/v1/user/vehicles/:VIN/statistics/allTrips
  • Where :VIN is your vehicle's VIN.
  • Remember to include the Authorization: Bearer header.

Response

{
    "allTrips": {
        "avgElectricConsumption": {
            "communityLow": 0,
            "communityAverage": 16.33,
            "communityHigh": 35.53,
            "userAverage": 14.76
        },
        "avgRecuperation": {
            "communityLow": 0,
            "communityAverage": 3.76,
            "communityHigh": 14.03,
            "userAverage": 2.3
        },
        "chargecycleRange": {
            "communityAverage": 121.58,
            "communityHigh": 200,
            "userAverage": 72.62,
            "userHigh": 135,
            "userCurrentChargeCycle": 60
        },
        "totalElectricDistance": {
            "communityLow": 1,
            "communityAverage": 12293.65,
            "communityHigh": 77533.6,
            "userTotal": 3158.66
        },
        "avgCombinedConsumption": {
            "communityLow": 0,
            "communityAverage": 1.21,
            "communityHigh": 6.2,
            "userAverage": 0.36
        },
        "savedCO2": 87.58,
        "savedCO2greenEnergy": 515.177,
        "totalSavedFuel": 0,
        "resetDate": "1970-01-01T01:00:00+0100"
    }
}

Values

• chargecycleRange is in Km.
• totalElectricDistance is in Km.

I'm not sure what units of the other values are.

Get Range Map

Generate a polyline displaying the predicted range of the vehicle.

• /webapi/v1/user/vehicles/:VIN/rangemap
  • Where :VIN is your vehicle's VIN.
  • Remember to include the Authorization: Bearer header.

Response

{
    "rangemap": {
        "center": {
            "lat": 51.123456,
            "lon": -1.2345678
        },
        "quality": "AVERAGE",
        "rangemaps": [
            {
                "type": "ECO_PRO_PLUS",
                "polyline": [
                    {
                        "lat": 51.6991281509399,
                        "lon": -2.00423240661621
                    },
                    {
                        "lat": 51.6909098625183,
                        "lon": -1.91526889801025
                    },
                    ...
                ]
            },
            {
                "type": "COMFORT",
                "polyline": [
                    {
                        "lat": 51.7212295532227,
                        "lon": -1.7363977432251
                    },
                    {
                        "lat": 51.6991496086121,
                        "lon": -1.73077583312988
                    },
                    ...
                ]
            }
        ]
    }
}

Values

• ECO_PRO_PLUS driving using the efficient Eco mode.
• COMFORT driving using comfort mode.

Sending information to the car

Sending information to the car is slightly complicated.

Your app communicates with the API, the API then communicates with the car's 3G modem, then you have to wait for a response.

If your car is in poor coverage, you can expect significant latency. Often much higher than a typical timeout will allow for.

At a basic level, you can just send a request - for example to lock the doors, or set off-peak charging.

Get Request status

Shows the status of a POSTed request

• /webapi/v1/user/vehicles/:VIN/serviceExecutionStatus?serviceType=:SERVICE
  • Where :VIN is your vehicle's VIN.
  • Remember to include the Authorization: Bearer header.

Response

{
   "executionStatus":{
      "serviceType":"DOOR_LOCK",
      "status":"EXECUTED",
      "eventId":"123456789012345AB1CD1234@bmw.de"
   }
}

Values

Valid statuses are:

• DELIVERED
• EXECUTED
• INITIATED
• NOT_EXECUTED
• PENDING
• TIMED_OUT

The following are valid :SERVICE types, but may not be supported by your vehicle.

• CHARGE_NOW
• CHARGING_CONTROL
• CLIMATE_CONTROL
• CLIMATE_NOW
• DOOR_LOCK
• DOOR_UNLOCK
• GET_ALL_IMAGES
• GET_PASSWORD_RESET_INFO
• GET_VEHICLES
• GET_VEHICLE_IMAGE
• GET_VEHICLE_STATUS
• HORN_BLOW
• LIGHT_FLASH
• LOCAL_SEARCH
• LOCAL_SEARCH_SUGGESTIONS
• LOGIN
• LOGOUT
• SEND_POI_TO_CAR
• VEHICLE_FINDER

POST a command

Instructs the car to perform an action.

• /webapi/v1/user/vehicles/:VIN/executeService
  • Where :VIN is your vehicle's VIN.
  • Remember to include the Authorization: Bearer header.

Available Commands

These commands are all available via the API, but may not be supported by your vehicle.

These are just what I've discovered so far.

Data must be POSTed to the server.

Initiate Charging

If the vehicle is plugged in, but not charging (due to an off peak setting?) it is possible to force the car to charge.

• serviceType=CHARGE_NOW

Start Climate Control

This will activate climate control within your vehicle.

It appears to be limited to the last temperature you set when you were in the car. I can't find a way to instruct the car to reach a specific temperature.

• serviceType=CLIMATE_NOW

Lock the doors

Performs central locking.

• serviceType=DOOR_LOCK

Unlock the doors

This will unlock all the doors on your vehicle.

Please use extreme caution when sending this command. Ensure that you are in sight of the vehicle and are able to lock it if needed.

• serviceType=DOOR_UNLOCK

Flash the headlights

If you can't find the vehicle, or need to illuminate something in its vicinity, you can briefly activate the headlights.

• serviceType=LIGHT_FLASH&count=2
  • I assume that count relates to the number of seconds to keep the light on?

Charging Schedule

Set the peak / off peak charging schedule.

• serviceType=CHARGING_CONTROL
  • I haven't bothered to figure this out, but the error it returns should give you some pointers:

{
   "error":{
      "code":500,
      "description":"(SmartPhoneUtil-A-102) Bad value(s) for parameter(s): Invalid chargingProfile, expected weeklyPlanner or twoTimesTimer"
   }
}

Vehicle Finder

• serviceType=VEHICLE_FINDER
  • I'm not sure what this does.

Response

An example response for all POST commands:

{
    "executionStatus": {
        "serviceType": "LIGHT_FLASH",
        "status": "INITIATED",
        "eventId": "123456789012345AB1CD1234@bmw.de"
    }
}

What's Next

Using these commands you should be able to replicate the functionality of the official app.

As you can see, I've managed to get my car to Tweet:

edent's Car

@edent_car

🚗 4 miles in 13 minutes
Efficiency: 5.36 miles/kWh
🔋 53% (37 miles)
🔌 Unplugged
⚠ Shutdown Secured
2,160 miles total

---

It would be lovely if BMW decided to open up an official API so that people could fiddle with their cars. The API seems secure and there's limited scope for damaging the vehicles.

I've added all the documentation to GitHub. Please raise an issue or send a Pull Request with any changes.

Can I set my electrical system up to divert surplus electricity into the car when my house isn't using it. This is what I do with my hot water iBoost - when household energy usage is low, it automatically switches on my immersion heater. Can I rig up something similar for my car?

I've been thinking about this - and I'm not quite sure that it's worth doing. Hear me out!

Here comes the science bit...

Most UK domestic solar installs can generate a maximum of 4kW. The i3's batteries have a capacity of around 19kWh.

If you install a fast 7kW charger you'll be able to completely fill the car in 4 hours - but you'll never entirely max that capacity with solar juice.

So we're back to using a standard 3 pin socket. Generally, chargers can draw a max of 3kW and take around 8 hours to fill the car. How often do solar panels supply 3kW or over?

On the best solar day I've had this year, I got 27kWh out of the panels - sufficient to fully charge the car from flat.

Edent's Solar Panels

@Edent_Solar
Automated

Crikey! What a day. @edent's solar panels generated ~26.78kWh, earning £4.74
FAQ: shkspr.mobi/blog/solar-gra…
#edentSolar pic.x.com/7cyemn4qvo

---

But only around 4 hours were at or above 3kW. That's just about enough to top up the battery by half.

On a cool but bright day, it's just about possible to get 6-7 hours of >=3kW out of the panels.

Edent's Solar Panels

@Edent_Solar
Automated

Oh yeah! @edent's solar panels generated ~21.68kWh, earning £3.83
FAQ: shkspr.mobi/blog/solar-gra…
#edentSolar pic.x.com/ngpzf839s9

---

Which, in fairness, would usually be sufficient to completely charge the car.

From looking over my generation records, days like that are a bit of a rarity.

It would be possible to hook up a sensor, like the iBoost, and divert energy from being fed back into the mains grid. But I think it isn't worth it.

Electricity is fungible. A Watt is a Watt. It doesn't really make much difference whether it comes from the panels or the grid. If I generate 18kWh during the day, and I charge my car with the same amount, it doesn't matter if those two events occur simultaneously.

In the UK, exporting electricity attracts a fixed rate payment (of around 4p/kWh) based on 50% of generation. That is, there is no export meter. So whether the electricity flows back into the grid or not, you still get paid.

In terms of cost, I pay around 13p/kWh from Ovo Energy. The total cost to fill the car is around £2.50.

So...

• If the day is sunny enough to generate 18kWh...
• and if I can match the rate of generation to the rate of charge...
• and if I don't need the energy for anything else...

...then my electricity meter will be at a standstill and I will be charging for free and have saved myself £2.50.

More realistically, I'll probably be charging half my battery - so the savings are around £1.25 per charge (which won't be every day).

So, while direct charging would be theoretically cheaper, in practice it doesn't make enough difference to offset the cost of buying the equipment to make it work, nor is it worth the risk to the electronics of constantly stopping and starting the charging. In addition, it can be a bit inconvenient not knowing when the car will be fully charged.

Therefore, my plan is...

1. If it looks to be a nice sunny day and I'm not in a rush, use the standard lead to charge up throughout the day.
2. For the rest of the time, use the fast charger. Preferably around midday to offset some of the energy use.

(NB - if you're on an Economy 7 tariff with cheaper electricity at night - it may be worth just charging overnight.)

In summary - if you have solar panels and an electric car, don't worry too much about matching your charging time to your generation time.

But first, and brief diversion into PHYSICS and MATHS!

Physics

Imagine a kilogram weight (1Kg) sat on an ice rink. You want to push the object 1 metre. The energy you require to accomplish this is 1 Joule.

If you want to impart 1 Joule per second, that will take 1 Watt (1W).

Imagine a 100 Watt lightbulb - the old incandescent type - every second it is using 100 Watts. Run it for an hour and it has used 100 Watt hours (100Wh). Run it for 10 hours, and it will have used 1,000 Watt hours, or 1kWh.

Ok? Onwards!

Maths

My previous car - a Toyota Yaris Hybrid - had a 35 litre fuel tank which could take me around 420 miles.

420 miles / 35 litres = 12 MPL

1 mile per UK gallon = 0.22 miles per litre (Americans - our gallons are bigger than your gallons!)

12 / .22 = 55MPG

Based on my driving style and cost of fuel, we can work out the cost-per-mile.

To fill up a tank:

35 litres * £1.26 = £44

Here's how much fuel costs to drive per mile:

£44 / 420 miles = £0.105/mile.

(Fuel costs in the UK have fallen recently, but £1.26 was the average over the last 3 years.)

How does this compare to an electric car? I'm with Ovo Energy and my electricity costs roughly £0.13 per kWh.

The i3 has a usable battery of 18.8kWh. Therefore, the total cost to filling up is

18.8 kWh * £0.13 = £2.45

That's a cheap charge! But how far does it get us?

Range on an i3 is a slightly confusing affair. If I'm pootling around town and don't have any heating or air-conditioning on, it will happily do around 100 miles.

In the dead of winter, with the heat on full blast, driving up hill all both ways, and with your foot constantly on the pedal, it looks like it will do about 50 miles.

For all of the journeys I've done, it looks like around 88 miles per full charge. Let's call that 80 miles for simplicity.

£2.45 / 80 miles = £0.03 per mile

Yup, a thruppenny bit per mile when charging from a socket in a garage. Costs elsewhere may be higher - more on that later.

This tallies with the stats generated by the app.

I get 4.3 miles per kWh.

4.3 miles * 18.8 kWh = 80 miles per full charge

When I'm working from home, I can charge the car directly off my solar panels.

So, on a good day, I can charge my car for free - then rest smug in realisation that I'm literally...

Ok! On to the review!

Review

Let's get this out of the way first, the i3 has shockingly poor software. Car manufacturers are very good at hardware, but the usability and functionality of the software are at least a decade behine the state-of-the-art. Many of the problems with this otherwise brilliant car could be rectified with a software update. Whether BMW has the guts to radically improve its offering is another matter.

There is an app which comes with the car (Android and iOS) - again, it's poorly constructed and only offers limited access to some of the essential features of the car. More on that later.

The second thing to mention is the cost. This is a company car, so the real cost is obscured from me. It's a pricey car and BMW are incredibly stingy with what they include with it. If you want some of the smart driving features - and they are essential - you have to pay for an upgraded interior. Why? Because that's the only way to get the upgraded steering wheel!

One of the joys of the i3 is that it has a "Rapid Charge" port - pump pure DC into your car for a charge in 30 minutes. That's an extra cost.

Want to charge at public port? BMW only supply a regular 3 pin charging plug. They'll sell you the appropriate cable for £160. Or you can buy a third party cable for £130.

The base model does come with GPS maps (updated quarterly) and basic remote control connectivity - but if you want web access, traffic reports, or anything else - be prepared to pay. Personally, I just use Google Maps on my phone - they're more usable and accurate than BMW's offering.

Finally, lights. By default, the car comes with power-hungry halogen headlights. Want efficient LEDs? Another six-hundred quid, guvnor! Ok, so efficient LEDs only add about 1% to the range, but surely that's the sort of thing which should be built in as standard?

Overall, it makes buying the car a frustrating and expensive experience.

Set Up

Ok, so you've got your car. Time to crack open the manual! I really wouldn't bother. BMW have put the least amount of effort into this as possible. A dull, black and white tome which shows a left-hand-drive model despite the UK being a right-hand-drive country. The index at the back is simply wrong, sending you on a wild-goose chase to pages which bear no relevance to the topic at hand. Your best bet is doing an Internet search for your question and hoping someone else has figured it out first.

I think Kathy Sierra said it best:

Why doesn't the manual look as good as the brochure? Why has all the effort gone into convincing me to buy this car - but no effort in making my first experience with it delightful?

Ah well. It's reasonably obvious how everything works. If you're the sort of person who enjoys systematically pressing every button and creating a mental map of where every function is, you'll be fine. I imagine everyone else just leaves the defaults as they are and gets frustrated that they can't see the time on the dashboard (press the "DC" button repeatedly) or turn off the traffic reports (not controlled in a "Radio" settings, but by double tapping the aerial button near the volume control).

A word on that volume control, and the heating control, they're on the left hand side. Yup! This car was designed for those who drive on the wrong side of the road! Most modern vehicles integrate an ambidextrous design which can be used by LHD or RHD drivers. Not this car! I'm a long-limbed guy, and I find some of the more common dials just a little too far away to be comfortable.

This does have the side effect of making the Bluetooth "Skip Track" buttons more reachable. Because the jog-dial on the steering wheel only works with the radio - it doesn't work with Bluetooth devices. Because software is hard.

While I'm on the subject of Bluetooth - it connects just fine to my phone. I can stream audio and make handsfree phone calls. BMW are keen to sell you an extra Bluetooth option which, as far as I can tell, just allows you to connect multiple phones and send basic emails from your dashboard. I avoided that. Of note, there are two "cigar" charging ports in the car. One just under the dash and one in the centre console. So you can plug in and charge multiple devices. There's also a standard USB port if you want to play MP3s that way.

The standard sound option is perfect. You can pay extra (of course) for better speakers - but all the music and podcasts I've played sound great. Because there's no engine noise, you don't need the sound up quite so high.

You get FM and DAB radio - although the interface for accessing them is quite confusing. There's also a hidden AM radio which you can unlock if you're willing to hack your car. Apparently the engine interferes with weak AM signals, which is why it is disabled by default.

I've mentioned on this blog before about OBD ports on cars. The i3's is under the steering wheel and to the left. Here's a picture with a Bluetooth OBD dongle plugged in. I've not managed to get the port to do anything interesting... yet!

App

It's clear that BMW aren't app designers. What's less clear is why they refuse to open up their APIs to let real developers create innovative and useful services.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Replying to @BMW_UK@BMW_UK good morning! I've just got an i3. I would love to develop apps for it. Is there an API for ConnectedDrive?

---

BMW UK

@BMW_UK

Replying to @edent@edent Hi Terence, due to a number of factors we can't open our API's up to develop for our i3 platform at present..

---

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Replying to @BMW@BMW any news on when the api will be available again? Going to a hackathon this weekend - would love to show off the i3 at @overtheair.

---

BMW

@BMW

Replying to @edent@edent Hi Terence, we're sorry but we cannot comment on future offers at the moment. We hope for your understanding in this matter.

---

The app forces its own PIN lock. You may protect your phone will all manner of biometric security features, but BMW insist on having yet another PIN. If you flip out of the app and then straight back, you need to input the PIN again. Mine's 1234.

The thing is... there's such a limited range of things to do with the app, it doesn't really warrant extra protection. You can...

• See stats about your driving style.
• See charge and battery status.
• See if windows and doors are locked.
• See the car's location and send destinations to the GPS.
• Toggle some basic remote control features (lock, unlock, flash headlights)
• Tell the car when to charge and when to precondition the cabin.

That's it. Here's a quick list of things which would be actually useful. I thought of them after playing with the app for 10 minutes.

• Receive push notifications when the battery is full.
• Push notifications if the battery stops charging unexpectedly. (eg, someone has unplugged it.)
• Start and stop charging.
• Set the cabin temperature. The current preconditioning function only works with the temperature you last set. So if you drove to work in the cold, but you're parked in a sun trap, you currently can't switch on the AC.
• Shut the windows via remote.
• Perhaps video stream from the front & rear cameras.
• Deploy or collapse the wing mirrors.
• Tweak any of the software settings.

I'm sure there's a couple of dozen useful things that it could do - it just feels like BMW has done the bare minimum needed to make the car qualify as "smart".

You can read the i3's API documentation - but you can't do anything with it?

The Drive

It's fun - there's no doubt about it. The electric engine has instant torque, so you really get thrown back in your seat when you hammer it. For overtaking it's amazing. Incredibly responsive, the lightest touch will have it respond to your desires. The turning circle is amazingly small - you don't need to a 3 point turn, just yank the wheel all the way.

There's an electronic handbrake - you just press a button and it engages. You don't even need to disengage it manually - just start driving. Excellent!

Adaptive cruise control is magic - the car will keep its distance from the car in front of you. If they slow down, the cruise control automagically brakes. Brilliant!

The enhanced features like auto-parallel-parking are uncanny - hold down a button and the car takes over power and steering. Similarly, when using Traffic Jam Assist the car will drive itself - accelerating up to 35 MPH and sticking to its assigned lane. Actual witchcraft!

Of course, the car is silent when driving. Make sure you wind down your windows so you can yell at oblivious pedestrians. The car will also automatically detect "obstacles" like people and bicycles. I've not had an near-misses, so can't comment on how well that feature works.

Because the engine is silent, you really notice the road noise - that's not a criticism, just be aware that you won't be in a silent bubble if you're going down the motorway.

The i3 uses regenerative braking. As you slow down, the battery begins to charge - nifty! This means that if you take your foot off the accelerator, the car acts as if you've tapped the brakes. It takes a little getting used to, but after a week I think I've mastered the art of one-footed-driving. It's a pleasant experience

I only have three criticisms of the drive:

1. The suspension is a bit hard. It really does pick up a lot of the imperfections in the road. It's bumpy but not uncomfortable.
2. The mirror is a little small. This might be because I'm used to this giant Android Dashcam. It's perfectly serviceable - just a little cramped.
3. The software...

sigh Back to this point again. The adaptive cruise control has a habit of shutting off when it can't see the road ahead. That's fair enough - but it seems particularly badly affected by the sun low in the horizon. As it often is when commuting. It's not possible to tell when it's ready to be used again - so you find yourself habitually jabbing the button until it suddenly works.

It also doesn't cope with traffic lights or roundabout particularly well. Of course, one should concentrate on the road, but I found it common for the car to suddenly automatically accelerate towards a red light. As long as you don't use it for a substitute for paying attention, it's fine.

There are other software oddities. You need to turn on automatic windscreen wipers every time. Most cars have a physical switch, the i3 has a software toggle. Annoying.

The dashboard will tell you the speed limit for the road you're on. This seems to be controlled via a database in the car's GPS system - although it will pick up some temporary restrictions. It also "helpfully" makes a noise when you've accidentally gone over the limit.

There are three driving styles you can pick from - they control how quickly you can accelerate, the car's top speed, and whether the climate controls are on. Fiddling with them changes the range indicator on the dash - so you can see how many miles the air-conditioner costs you. On the most economical mode, acceleration is dampened, but you can override it by flooring the pedal.

But, at the end of the day, when all's said and done, what it comes down to, as a game of two halves - is that it's an exceptionally good car. Nippy, relaxed, and mostly easy to use. Whether it's zipping around town, cruising on a motorway, or sat in traffic, it's a pleasure to drive.

Charging

Broadly speaking, there are three ways to charge the i3. All systems will charge quickly to 80% and then slow down as they reach 100%.

1. 3 pin domestic socket. 8 hours to charge to 80% from empty. Cable comes with the car.
2. Type 2 Mennekes (Fast Charger). Will charge in 4 hours. There's a UK Government grant to install the chargers in your home. Requires a separate cable. Some chargers have a teathered cable.
3. CCS - the Combined Charging System (Rapid Charger). Takes 30 minutes to charge. Cables are always teathered to the charging unit.

Really the only downside to charging is that the cables tend to drag along the ground - which means they can get a little dirty. Nothing worse than using a petrol pump though.

I keep the cables in the boot of my car - as I'm reversing into a charging bay, it makes the most sense. There is a so-called "frunk", a front trunk which takes up the space where an internal-combustion engine would be. It's a little awkward to open (you have to find a hidden lever under the bonnet) and it isn't waterproof. Naturally, BMW will sell you a waterproof bag for £45... FFS!

At the moment I'm just using a domestic charger, but I've got a Fast Charger being installed in my garage by the fine folk at EV Charging Solutions.

I've got a big post in the works about the state of the UK's charging infrastructure. It's a bit of a mess at the moment - but seems to be getting better.

One nice thing about the i3 is the optional REX (Range EXtender) feature. When the battery gets down to 6% charge, the petrol engine kicks in. It doesn't power the wheels directly, rather it begins to recharge the batteries.

MORE MATHS!

The petrol tank holds 9 litres (in the EU model). It can drive approximately 80 miles on a full tank.

80 miles / 9 litres = 8.9 MPL

1 mile per UK gallon = 0.22 miles per litre.

8.9 / .22 = 40MPG

That's a worse than my hybrid's 55MPG - but not massively. And, theoretically, it's only for short hops to get me to a charging station. So far I've not had cause to use the engine. Apparently it will switch on for a few minutes every so often just to ensure nothing gets clogged.

The cost of using the petrol will be roughly...

£1.26 / 8.9 = £0.14 per mile

A Word On Range Anxiety

Range Anxiety is a term coined by the petrol industry. It's supposed to convey how people worry when driving electric cars. It's nonsense.

Literally, every drive I do goes through a GPS first - so I know how many miles I'm going to travelling. Looking at my personal driving habits, it's extremely rare that I go outside an 80 mile radius. When I do, I'm travelling on motorways which have plenty of service stations - which all have charging ports. I don't know about you, but after 2 hours in a car, I'm ready to stretch my legs, have a sandwich, and take a piss - by the time I'm done the car is charged and ready to go.

If I visit a friend, I'll ask them to chuck an extension lead out of the window and trickle charge.

The excellent Zap Map shows a list of all public charging points in the UK.

Not yet quite as plentiful as petrol stations, but good enough for driving around the country. More are being installed, and more businesses are fitting power-points for their employees. For regular commuters who live within an hour's drive of work - electric cars are perfect.

Final Thoughts

This car is close to perfect for me. 90% of my car journeys are to work and back - which this can comfortably do in a single charge. As it happens, I can plug in at work - and the working day is enough to fully charge my battery. If I'm at home, I can charge overnight. If I'm working from home, I let the solar take the strain.

For those rare longer journeys, the UK has fast chargers dotted around the motorways - and the petrol engine will prevent me from being stranded by the side of the motorway.

I'm going to be saving around £1,000 per year in fuel costs. I'll admit, that does somewhat take the sting out of being gouged by BMW for their pricey extras.

It's a fun car to drive - and the smart features really do reduce the stress of commuting.

Yes, the software is naff - but you're hopefully not fiddling with it while driving. Perhaps BMW will spend some money improving it? Or opening it up for development?

Long story short? The i3 is a great half-way point between fully autonomous electric vehicles and regular petrol cars.

Why? Cost, obviously.

I've been obsessively tracking my fuel consumption using the Fuelly app.

If I'm lucky, I get around 60MPG (UK) - given my mileage, the yearly cost is around £1,350. That means that my average cost per mile is £0.104 (over the last 3 years).

Electric cars are, generally, more expensive to buy. But what are their running costs? Looking at the BMW i3 specs (the car I'm probably getting) the calculation is...

(Battery Capacity * Electricity Cost) / Miles

The battery has a 22kWh capacity, I pay around £0.12/kWh. The i3 can get around 80 miles out of the battery.

(22 * 0.12) / 80 = £0.033

So, the cost per mile is a third of what I pay for petrol. But wait! There's more!

Regular readers know that I have solar panels on the house. During summer, I can easily generate the 22kWh needed to fill the car. On the weekends - or when I work from home - I can fill the car for free!

During November - usually the worst month for solar power - the maximum I can generate is 12kWh. Of course, the minimum is a paltry 0.8kWh, which will just about power the radio!

In total, assuming I do roughly the same mileage, I'll be saving at least £900 per year. More if you factor in solar charging.

Public Charging

The fly in the ointment is the cost of public charging. For now, my work lets me plug in to a slow charger for free. If I want to charge up in a car-park or service station, I've got a small problem. Because of the UK Government's pathological fear of centralised planning faith in the power of free-market capitalism, there are several different charging providers.

Now, this in itself, isn't a problem. But each of them requires a separate subscription and smart card. There are universal power sockets - but not universal payment methods. Imagine if you had to pay a yearly fee to Esso just in case you wanted to fuel up at one of their stations.

Infuriating!

Anyway, with a service like Polar some service stations charge £7.50 for a 30 minute rapid charge. That should fill the battery up to 80%.

7.5 / (80 * 0.8) = £0.075

7p per mile. Double what I pay at home, and within touching distance of the 10.4p per mile of petrol.

That's before you add on the £20/year cost of membership to the charging network.

Frequent public charging brings the cost efficiency of an EV down slightly.

Home Charging

Ok, so there is one more cost! Most EVs will charge through a domestic plug socket. Thanks to the UK's 230V infrastructure, a regular plug will fully charge a car overnight.

Get a 7kW fast-charger, and the car can be filled to 80% in around 3 hours.

The UK's Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) provides subsidies to get fast-chargers installed at home. Generally speaking, the cost of installation is around £200.

TCO

We British are far too prudish with matters of finance, so I'm going to attempt to break from that stereotype and present some real figures about my personal costs for getting an EV.

I have a company car provided via my employers. Your sums may be different.

My current car costs me £16.03 per month in extra tax. I pay an average of £1,350.08 per year in petrol. Over a year, the total cost of ownership is £1,542.44

A fully tricked out BMW i3 with all the exciting features (Self driving! Auto parking! Magic door locks!) will cost me £62.05 per month in extra tax. Youch! It's a more expensive car, on a lower tax band.

Assuming 3.3p per mile, and the same average mileage each year, my fuel costs will be £428.39. Over a year, the total cost of ownership is £1,172.75

That's a saving of £370 per year.

In the first year, I'll have to pay around £200 if I want a faster charger fitted.

At the moment, I park on the street outside my house - my garage is used for storing all the USB cables and old bits of computer that I just can't bear to throw away. If I want my garage to get a new roof, electric doors, and generally made good - that's another £4,500.

Hmmmm.

Further Thoughts

For my commuting needs, an electric car makes total sense. The i3 has a small petrol engine which can recharge the battery if needed - doubling its range should I wish to journey further afield.

Cost wise, it's not the car itself which is the problem - it's the infrastructure to support it. At the moment, I'm quite content to park on the street - getting an EV really necessitates a working garage. Unless I want to fling an extension cord onto the pavement...

Or, I'll see if I can get a Tesla!

Here's a quick run-down of its features.

HTML5

A fairly miserable score of 268 out of 555 points on http://html5test.com/ The screen is 1280*480 with good visibility. It's slow to scroll and, even with the touchpad controller, a pain to navigate.

User Agent

It reports as this unholy mess. Chrome 15 on Windows XP. Helpful! Oh, the IP address is in Germany because - I presume - that's where BMW's proxy is. Connectivity is provided by Vodafone's 3G network.

Security

The browser kept popping up with this certificate error. I'm not sure if it's the proxy, or the browser which is causing the failure to validate certificates.

Options

There is an options menu. Cookies are blocked by default, there's a flash player! Flash! In the car! I ticked the "sound" option and visited an HTML5 sound test page. MP3 is supported. Impressively, so are Ogg and WebM!

Video

Some HTML5 video is supported - although playback is a bit jerky. Audio support is variable.

So, let's try out YouTube - the biggest video site on the planet!

Well, that's underwhelming. I wonder what is up with the Flash player on this thing.

A quick (slow) visit to Adobe shows us part of the problem -

An ancient Flash version. Which means you can expect to see a lot of things like:

Tabs

One thing that surprised me was the ability to have multiple tabs. Considering how slow the browser is, it's useful to load up a site in one, then read another tab while waiting for it to load.

Open too many tabs (3 in this case) and you get this somewhat confusing error message.

There's no obvious way to close a tab...

You can always go into your history to see what you were reading before the browser flamed out.

Headers and Proxy

A fairly sparse set of headers are sent by the UA.

The proxy is by M-Way Solutions. I'm not sure if it's the proxy, or Vodafone, but there is some severe picture compression going on:

Rendering

For regular web pages, the rendering is competent - if slow. Here's my blog:

CSS rounded corner and webfonts all work.

But there is a glaring omission. The Unicode support from the browser is atrocious. Want to view Emoji? This is what you'll see -

☹

Overall

This is a shitty browser. It's slow - and that's not the fault of the 3G network - rendering takes forever, scrolling is awkward, mouse pointer precision is poor, and has limited support for modern web technologies. Along with the frequent SSL certificate warnings, the UA is probably vulnerable to modern attacks.

If you want to pay £95 per year to browse the web while sat in a motorway service station, I suggest you buy a cheap Android tablet and a PAYG SIM. Browsing will be a lot less frustrating, and you won't have to put up with seeing this error message constantly.

But, apart from that, the i3 is a great car!

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Slightly more detail of the tree what fell on me. pic.x.com/5fgi1zhyln

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It wasn't quite as dramatic as some of the footage you see from Russian drivers - whose dashboard cameras picked up a meteor streaking through the sky - but I thought it was the kind of thing I would have liked to have had recorded. For insurance purposes, if nothing else. And, given the number of terrible drivers I encounter on my commute - I'd like to have some verifiable evidence if I'm ever involved in an incident.

So - time to buy a Dash Cam! As a geek, it's my duty to buy one that I can hack :-)

I found an Android based Dash Cam on Amazon for £80.

The first thing to note is that this is a cheap piece of Chinese tat. The online marketplace AliBaba lists dozens of similar products.

You could spend a lifetime picking out the one which exactly matched your needs - rear parking sensors, infra-red, continual surveillance, auto-upload, etc. I decided to forgo the hassle of importing one, and went through Amazon directly. If it did turn out to be rubbish, I could return it fairly easily.

One of the problems of buying these sorts of products, is that you're never entirely sure what you're going to get. Between mistranslated product descriptions and downright deceptive photographs, it's a bit of a gamble.

I was happily surprised when the product turned up as advertised - more or less!

Unboxing

The DashCam comes with velcro straps to connect it to your mirror, a rear camera, external GPS, car charger, and data cable. No printed manual, but it was there on a mini CD.

First Impressions

As soon as it booted - a swift 30 seconds - a mechanical voice bade me to "have a safe journey." What a pleasing touch! The battery was nearly full, and the language was set to UK English.

The screen isn't particularly bright. It's adequate on an overcast day, but not great in direct sunlight.

It's not possible to change the screen brightness - although the options make it look like it is. Like many cheap screens, it works best if looked at straight. The colours become very washed out if you're looking at it from above or below. Sideways is fine.

The screen was set to stay on indefinitely. That's OK if you're using the inbuilt navigation, but I decided to set the screen to sleep after 15 seconds of inactivity. That way, it won't distract me as I drive.

Really, the only fly in the ointment was that the timezone was set to China Standard Time

Video Recording

As soon as the Dash Cam receives power (usually when your car is started), it boots and auto-records.

The front camera records at 1920*1080 @ 30fps - files are around 62MB/minute.

The rear camera is 720*576 @ 50fps - files around 6MB/minute.

The quality is, again, adequate. The videos do look like they've been upsampled. Colour reproduction isn't perfect. You've get a clear view of the numberplate for anyone directly ahead of you and (depending on how you position the camera) behind you. I've yet to see how well they cope in the dark.

Video files can be set to save every minute, 3 minutes, or five minutes. There's a g-force sensor which should automatically save the files in the event of a crash. But I've yet to try that out ;-) Once the card is full, the software should automatically erase the old ones to make space for new recordings.

An important thing to note - this device needs a micro SD card. Even though there is free space on the device, it simply won't record unless given a card. It's recommended that you use a Class 10 card - to ensure that the memory can be written to fast enough - they're only about a tenner.

There are lots of camera options to play with.

Quite why you'd want your footage in sepia tones is beyond me! I tried to get the speed of travel added to the video, but that doesn't seem to have worked. I'd also quite like the location on there. And, for some reason, the rear video is horizontally flipped. Guess I'll have to fiddle with those options!

Snapshots

You can capture stills from the front and rear cameras.

The front is 1280*960 (although the aspect ratio is incorrect). Click for full size :

The rear is... odd... Because it's an analogue camera, the software samples it as a 2592*1936 image. Click for full size :

There's no EXIF data to speak of and, sadly, no geolocation included with the images.

Audio Options

Audio recording was surprisingly good. There are two microphones on the back of the mirror, they'll pick up what you're saying - but not much of what's going on outside the car.

What I thought was an FM radio is actually an FM transmitter. Pick a frequency, tune in your car's radio, and you can listen to what the device is playing over your car's speakers. Handy, because there's no Bluetooth and the small speakers on the back of the device aren't quite loud enough to overcome the noise of traffic.

GPS

Most Android devices have a built in GPS chip. This unit has an external antenna - ostensibly to give you a quicker location fix and greater accuracy. In reality, it was no quicker at picking up satellites than my phone.

The onboard navigation app is powered by iGO and is surprisingly accurate. More than that, it had offline maps for most of Europe! That means, even without a WiFi connection, you can plan a journey and be guided to your destination. Of course, you don't get live traffic updates like you do with Google Maps - but it's pretty useful! The map defaulted to a Russian location - but quickly located me in Oxford.

Fitting

It's fairly painless to fit. The velcro straps on the back will help it fit snuggly over your your existing mirror. The wires are very long, so you should be able to route them around your car like so :

You can view the images from the cameras while you're fitting them - which makes it easier to position them for the perfect viewing angle.

One strange item is the bare wires coming from the rear camera. They appear to be designed to help the device function as a rear parking camera. That is, when you shift into reverse, the camera should come on automatically.

I've no idea how they should be wired in - so I just ignored them.

Drawbacks

It's not a perfect device - there are a few flaws you should be aware of.

Hard To Export

Ok, so you've recorded an epic video - now what? Well, you have to take the micro SD card out and find a computer to put it in! There's no other way to transfer the files. No Bluetooth or wireless transfer tool is available.

The recording screen isn't particularly well designed.

No Automated Uploading

I'd have liked the device to auto-upload videos once it got in range of my home WiFi. There's no option for that - so I might have to write an app!

No Keyboard

Ok, this is a downright weird one. The phone has the standard Android web browser on it - but you can't use it because there's no keyboard installed!

I installed F-Droid on the device by copying the APK to the SD card. Then I installed AnySoft Keyboard.

I had to sideload the alternative app store because...

No Google Services

No maps, Gmail, Play Store, YouTube or any of the other Google services. You'll have to find alternative apps stores if you want to install apps or games.

That said... The device doesn't need any of those things. It functions perfectly well without them.

WiFi

The WiFi is 2.4GHz only. That's pretty standard for cheaper equipment. It didn't have brilliant range so, depending on how close your car is to your home or office, it may have trouble connecting.

Power

The device takes a USB Mini connection - rather than the more popular/modern micro connection. While that's annoying, it's not a show-stopper. The car charger is a hefty beast, with a very long cable - but it has no extra ports on it. That means you won't be able to charge your phone or other gadgets while using it.

Personally, I've bought a multi-USB-port car charger and a very long USB cable.

Verdict

An Android based Dash Cam for £80 is a pretty good deal. The camera quality isn't really HD - but it should be good enough to capture the details of an incident should you be unlucky enough.

The software quality isn't great - but it does the job. Really, after setting it up, it's unlikely you'll need to play with it much.

Finally, as a mirror, it works flawlessly!

Here Be Geekery

The device shipped with Developer Options enabled. However, adb couldn't detect it. lsusb showed it as ID 18d1:0003 Google Inc. Changing to a different USB port seemed to work.

The device name is "SoftwinerCvr" - (Car Video Recorder?) - there's almost no information about it on the web.

It's not a particularly fast device - you can download the 0xBenchmark results.

The processor is an ARMv7 Processor rev 2 (v7l):sun4i:0000. It reports as SoftwinerCvr:crane_cvr-eng 4.0.4 IMM76D 20141009 test-keys. The browser appears to be the standard 4.0.4 Android version.

The default launcher is DX_Launcher (no, I've never heard of it either) and I suspect it can be replaced. Pressing the Android icon on the main screen takes you to a fairly standard looking app drawer.

There isn't much in the way of interesting options. Once it has connected to WiFi you can tether other devices to it.

There is also a vestigial HDMI options setting - even though there's no HDMI out.

Video Codecs

Most any system should be able to play back the videos it records. Front :

  Metadata:
    major_brand     : isom
    minor_version   : 512
    compatible_brands: isomiso2mp41
  Duration: 00:01:00.78, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 8607 kb/s
    Stream #0.0(eng): Video: h264 (Baseline), yuv420p, 1920x1080, 8540 kb/s, 30.17 fps, 1k tbn
    Stream #0.1(eng): Audio: aac, 44100 Hz, mono, fltp, 64 kb/s

Rear :

  Metadata:
    major_brand     : isom
    minor_version   : 512
    compatible_brands: isomiso2mp41
  Duration: 00:00:59.86, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1751 kb/s
    Stream #0.0(eng): Video: h264 (Baseline), yuv420p, 720x576, 1673 kb/s, 50.20 fps, 1k tbn
    Stream #0.1(eng): Audio: aac, 44100 Hz, mono, fltp, 64 kb/s

Touch Screen

As advertised, the screen supports five touch points.

Leftovers

Like lots of cheap goods from Shenzen - the device has lots of odd bits which are obviously intended for a slightly different product. For example, on the bottom are three buttons which do nothing. They don't even feel like they're connected to anything.

As we can see from the back, there are a few more "mistakes". The "GPS" and "DADT" (underlined in red) are blocked off. The GPS plugs into the port marked 🎧. There's "RESED" and "RESET2" buttons - as well as two microphones, although the device only records in mono.

As mentioned, there are oddities in the firmware. For example, the browser's homepage is the Chinese search engine hao123.com.

The hackability seems fairly low. I can easily install apps, but I couldn't get it to reboot into recovery. There's not enough information on the device to work out if it's possible to upgrade the firmware beyond the three year old Ice Cream Sandwich. There's depressingly little information about "SoftWiner" out there.

The best I've managed to find is a Russian forum review of the unit.

The forum contains some disassembly photos - it points out that the GPS unit contains a battery which can be replaced - and it's possible to upgrade the battery in the main unit as well.

There are also links to some third part firmware - which I'm too chicken to try!

Manufacturer

It turns out that this is the HD-Q7 manufactured by Phisung. You'll need to speak pretty good Chinese in order to make the most of the site though!

If you have any questions or tips - stick them in the comments box.

Essentially, OBD (On Board Diagnostics) is a port which is found on every car produced since the late 1990s. It allows garages to see all sorts of diagnostic information about your car, its engine, and all other manner of petrol-headed goodness. It's designed to be easily accessible and conform to a common standard.

So, it's no surprise that a whole cottage-industry has developed around this port. Whereas connecting to OBD used to be something done only by garages, now anyone can buy an adapter. Which is how I got this £20 BlueTooth capable OBD dongle.

After scrabbling around in my new Toyota Yaris Hybrid, I found the OBD port just to the right of the steering wheel.

Fitting it was simply a matter of figuring our which way round it went, and then jamming it in. It fits well and doesn't feel like it will fall out - but a bit of gaffer tape may be in order to secure it when I drive along bumpy roads. As soon as it plugged in, the lights started flashing and I was able to pair it with my Android phone.

Security

The default code for these things is either "0000", "1234", or "6789". I really wish that could be changed. OR, at least, print a unique 8 digit code on each device. Essentially, the unit is on all the time - slowing drawing energy from the battery - which means that it is discoverable all the time.

So, anyone walking around the car park - or stuck in traffic with me - can get a full readout of my car's diagnostics.

True, it's not the biggest security threat in the world. We know that proprietary software is riddled with bugs. Toyota had to recall hundreds of thousands of cars due to software glitches.

Perhaps there's a bug in the car - or the device - which will let an attacker stall the engine, or unlock the doors, or find out my fuel efficiency.

Of course, I could unplug the dongle every time I get out of the car (some units have physical power buttons) but that's a faff I can do without.

The Plan

I'm using the free Android app Torque (Pro Version available for £3).

It's a nifty program which lets you monitor (and export) data from the engine. My phone will quite happily pair with the car's audio system and the OBD dongle - so that shouldn't be a problem. But it does rely on my remembering to pair the device (and take my phone with me!).

What I'm planning to do is use a cheap 2nd hand Android phone to act as a 3G bridge for the dongle. The Yaris has a USB port hidden in the glove compartment - it's usually used for playing music from a USB stick, but I think it should be sufficient to trickle charge a phone.

As the car doesn't have a built in GPS unit, I can use the Android's GPS to keep track of the car. I can use its 3G connection to email or text me whenever the car is moved - useful if it's being stolen or towed. I can plot my journeys, automatically let my wife know when I'm stuck in traffic, and all sorts of other jiggery-pokery.

Let the hacking commence :-)

This car is red

I learned to drive pretty much as soon as I hit 17. Within a few months, I had passed my driving test (first time!) and so I took to the road.

That last year of sixth-form before university I drove my batterd old Peugeot to death. I remember driving my friends everywhere - cinema, pub, randomly around town - it didn't matter. I had the freedom to drive where I wanted. As long as mum had filled the car up with petrol.

I got a job at Thorpe Park the summer before I went to UEA. I drove back and forth every single day, listening to Chris Evans on the crackly medium-wave radio.

Taking a car to university would have been madness. Even if it had survived the journey up to Norwich, parking would have been expensive - and the fine city was served by a fine bus network.

Over my years at university, Liz and I walked everywhere. If we were feeling Ritzy we'd take a bus - but mostly we rode Shank's Pony the hour's walk into town and out of town. Cars dropped out of my life.

I got a job which came with its own van. We used it a few times to pick up shopping - but it wasn't the sort of thing you could park outside a mate's house.

Moving down to Newbury, again, there was no need for a car. We both could walk to work and the town centre wasn't really far enough away to warrant a vehicle. We got a small blue car for some reason - probably because it only cost £200. We sold it a year later for £100.

So, for the last 6 years we've been without a permanent car. I've hired a vehicle when we desperately needed to go somewhere without public transport - but that was it.

My new job necessitates a commute. And, while sitting on the M25 every day isn't exactly the highlight of my day, it's infinitely preferable to paying three grand a year for South West Trains substandard service.

I'd been driving a Prius as a temporary car - although I loved the efficiency (65MPG most days), the size was just too much for me to handle. Ever since destroying a car park with my van, I've had a loathing of large vehicle. So the Yaris Hybrid it was.

It's small, nippy, fuel efficient, and - most importantly burning red!