Thoughts from the Curb

May 28, 2008 - World's First Plug-In Hybrid BMW Z3

See more Car Pictures at CarSpace.com

Actually no, I haven't converted my 1998 BMW Z3 2.8 into a plug-in hybrid version. But the car is plugged in, or more specifically, a battery charger is.

Since my car sits down in the Edmunds garage collecting a fine layer of dust (some editor's cars look like they were parked next to Mt. St. Helens), it's recently had a tendency to lose its battery charge in the nearly seven months I've owned it. I should obviously drive the poor thing more, but who wants to sit in traffic in a manual transmission roadster when there's a perfectly good Saturn Aura available? Well, I'll let you ponder that.

Anyway, the battery's been dead for a while and given its potential age, I decided to get a new one. Problem is, after looking around, I'm almost certain the Z3's battery size and type is only produced by BMW. Our local Santa Monica dealer quoted me $220 -- ouch. So before going down that road or hitting the treacherous BMW battery black market, our new testing engineer Al Austria loaned me his battery recharger. He says it may take a day or two, but it's worth a shot given the potentially expensive alternative. I'll keep y'all posted.

-James Riswick  

8:31 am | Categories: my z3 Permalink | Alert Administrator

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