BMW 3 Series 330e 2020 long-term review
Can a plug-in hybrid 3 Series be as easy to live with as the 320d? We have six months to find out
*Why we’re running it: *Plug-in 330e will overtake 320d as the biggest-selling 3 Series. We’ll find out if it can match the diesel’s all-round appeal
-Month 2 - Month 1 - Specs-
-Life with a BMW 330e: Month 2-
Having both an electric-only range and a fuel tank of substance means that something has to give in terms of packaging. It’s easy enough in an SUV, with extra room in the floor, but not so in a saloon like the 3 Series. So it’s boot space that suffers, fitting only a couple of weekend bags for two humans and a dog and all the wires for charging the battery.
*Mileage: 4612*
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*Our plug-in hybrid saloon is great to drive but tricky to operate - 25 March 2020*
So what is it actually like to drive? You’ll forgive me for only getting to answer this question now, in the third meaty report on the 330e. So rarely has a car needed so much scene-setting and prep, first to find out if it can actually be used as its maker intended, and second to learn how to use it yourself. Clearly this is nothing like the simple-to-use familiarity of having a 320d…
Charging points installed, hybrid tech learned and company car tax bill calculated, and it’s onto living with the car. And for the most part, it won’t surprise you to learn that the 330e is proving much like any other 3 Series.
It steers with an accuracy some bona fide sports cars can only dream of, and it is one of those cars that has the ability to make the most mundane and routine of journeys an enjoyable experience – and that’s simply down to everything the driver interacts with being engineered with the pleasure of driving in mind. That was true the last time we had a 3 Series at Autocar, a previous-generation 320d xDrive M Sport version back in 2016. That car also became a firm favourite for the way it could make every drive so pleasurable. An evolutionary approach has been adopted, then – and why wouldn’t BMW, when it has such a formula licked?
The one major dynamic difference you do notice is the extra weight. The 330e weighs in excess of 200kg more than an equivalent current-generation 320i, due to that electric motor plus the lithium ion battery pack under the rear seats. As such, the 330e doesn’t quite have the fleetfootedness of a 320d in its ability to change direction, yet it still feels more agile than an Audi A4.
The ride also suffers a bit on occasion, with a tendency for the impact of potholes to crash through the cabin, yet I’m not sure how much of that is down to the 19in M Sport alloys of our car. That was true also of the 2016 320d we had on similar-sized wheels, and the two cars also share the optional adaptive M Sport dampers. I’d be keen to try a 330e on smaller wheels and with the standard dampers for comparison, and find out whether the weight or the chassis set-up is to blame.
So the hybrid system doesn’t do anything major to mess with the dynamics of the excellent G20-generation 3 Series, which is, remember, an Autocar five-star road test car in its 320d guise. The changes are, predictably enough, found when you press your right foot to the floor.
This is where it gets a bit complicated. There are so many different ways of driving the 330e and so many modes to put it in, depending on how long your journey is and how you want to drive. These are as extreme as using electric-only mode and having the power reduced to try to preserve as much battery range as possible, or as extreme as Xtraboost mode, which liberates the full 111bhp of the electric motor and the 181bhp of the 2.0-litre petrol.
The point is this: everything needs a button pressed, and there’s no easy way to let the car choose. The normal mode, Hybrid, runs the battery down in the first instance to keep driving on electric power as much as possible, unless you want to save the battery for later or you have a route plumbed into the navigation system, in which case it’ll save the battery for you. So while very clever, even at its most ‘normal’, it’s not that simple.
*Love it:*
*Public chargers *Used one for the first time at a Hampshire garden centre that had a dozen free. Got eight miles of range in 20 minutes, gratis.
*Loathe it:*
*public chargers *Went to use one at a hotel that had been good enough to install them but not good enough to stop an old BMW X6 and an Audi A4 parking in the spaces.
*Mileage: 4221*
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*an immediate impression from behind the wheel - 28 March 2020*
By rights I ought to be concentrating on this 330e’s excellent, efficient powertrain, but when I drove the car, I couldn’t put aside my obsession with its phenomenal steering: supremely accurate, perfectly weighted and geared, with a wheel of ideal diameter and rim size. Who, I kept wondering, can be enjoying a better steering system? My answer: nobody, even at treble the money
*Steve Cropley*
*Mileage: 4093*
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*Petrol power can still impress - 4 March 2020*
My commutes are mostly electrically powered only, but longer trips bring the 2.0-litre petrol engine into play. At motorway speeds, it feels like any other 3 Series. It’s quiet and refined, and with a mid-range boosted by the electric motor’s torque. Oddly, the faster you go, the more economical the petrol engine becomes – up to a point. You’ll see 50mpg at 70mph running on petrol power alone.
*Mileage: 3446*
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Life with a BMW 330e: Month 1
*Electric-only commuting is now possible in both directions – conditions permitting - 26 February 2020*
The company car tax benefits of plug-in hybrids like the BMW 330e are such that instances of them being returned with the charging cables in the boot still in the Cellophane wrapper still occur, admits BMW.
But that is becoming a rarer occurrence, and in my entry for understatement of the year, you need to be charging your plug-in hybrid to get the most out of it. You could just drive it and never charge it, but then you’d be struggling to get 35mpg from a 2.0-litre petrol 3 Series with a load of extra weight you’re making no use of, plus a much smaller fuel tank that means you’ll be stopping to fill up with fuel more often anyway.
With an electric-only range that sits between about 20 and 25 miles with the cold weather at this time of year (the official range is 35 miles), the 330e needs to be charged quite frequently and driven on electric power for as long as you can to really get the most out of it to save money on fuel as well as in tax.
My commute is between 25 and 30 miles in each direction, depending how bad the traffic is on any given route, so I can tackle it almost entirely on electric power and feel a bit of a poster child for the effective use of a plug-in hybrid, given that the longer journeys I undertake at the weekend mean I’m also making use of the petrol engine. I’m able to be said poster child because we have the luxury of charging at work and, as I have a driveway, I can charge the car at home, too. For someone like me, plug-in hybrids are a very sensible and pragmatic solution.
Getting a charging point installed at home was much more straightforward than I thought it would be and was explained to me by the BP Chargemaster fitter in electricity terminology that even my limited DIY ability allowed me to understand. I’d had my fuse box upgraded last summer, leaving a spare connection for a charging point to be hooked up to and given its own switch on the consumer unit.
The BP Chargemaster Homecharge unit I went for typically costs £449, assuming there are no special requests or circumstances that deviate from what should be quite a straightforward installation.
That figure is after a £500 grant from the government’s Office for Low Emissions Vehicles’ Electric Vehicle Homecharge Scheme. Put simply, anyone getting an electric or plug-in hybrid car can get that grant, and up to two per household are allowed should there be two qualifying cars per household. The BP Chargemaster unit is a 7kW charger (which I went for), but it can fit a 3.6kW if your property’s power isn’t sufficient.
You can choose where the Homecharge unit is fitted – I went for down the side of the house – so long as an earthing rod can be fitted in the vicinity (and your car’s charging cable can reach, which in the case of the 4.5m-long cable offered in the 330e and the charging point being located on the front wing, requires reversing as close to the house as I can get).
All in, installation took about two hours, and the 330e can now have its 12kWh battery fully recharged on my drive in about two and a half hours, at a cost of about £1.30 on my current electricity tariff. On that point, you can get tariffs now that give you cheaper power overnight specifically with charging your electric or plug-in hybrid car in mind.
BP Chargemaster offers an app that lets you track how much you’re spending. BMW also has one that allows you to precondition the car ahead of your chosen departure time so long as it’s connected to the charger – ideal for making the cabin toasty warm and the glass frost-free on the cold winter mornings we’ve had so far.
That’s now two chunky reports on the 330e and I’ve hardly said anything about actually living life with the car itself. That’s not posturing: it simply goes to show just how much there is to get used to with the car, and how much preparation is needed in advance to make sure it’s a sensible choice for you in the first place, and then know what you need to do to get the most from it as soon as it arrives. Seeds now sown.
*Love it:*
*BMW connected app *Great for checking battery and fuel tank range – and turning on the climate control to defrost the car.
*Loathe it:*
*Engine cutting in *Driving on electric power is so quiet and soothing that it’s a shame to be interrupted by the petrol engine.
*Mileage: 3289*
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*Maximising range the right way - 12 February 2020*
Early journeys show how similar the 330e is to other 3 Series, yet also such a new experience. Be aware of your journey length and battery range to truly maximise efficiency. Never charge it and drive it like any other 3, and you’ll only get about 40mpg. Charge it often and you’ll cover many miles on electric power alone and average nearly 70mpg.
*Mileage: 2999*
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*Welcoming the 330e to the fleet - 5th February 2020*
The BMW 330e comes with a lot of interesting numbers. There are the impressive performance figures (288bhp, 0-62mph in 5.9sec). Plus there are the official economy and CO2 figures (176.6mpg, 36g/km). Those then feed into the 330e’s real trump card – and its imminent crowning as the best-selling 3 Series in the range: its impending benefit-in-kind (BIK) tax rate of just 10%.
Put another way, come April it will cost a company car driver in tax around one third that of the currently best-selling 3 Series, the 320d, which, says BMW UK, the 330e will quickly usurp in sales. And all that for a car that’s significantly more powerful and which can travel on electric power alone for around 35 miles.
While talk of tax bands and BIK rates is not typical Autocar fare, from April it’s about to become increasingly significant as the government launches new company car tax rules unashamedly designed to increase the sales of electric cars and plug-in hybrids.
Car makers also need to sell ever-increasing numbers of these models to lower their fleet CO2 averages and avoid fines for being over the industry-wide 95g/km fleet average target. Electric cars and sub-50g/ km plug-in hybrids bring a double-whammy benefit of lowering fleet CO2 figures and qualifying for ‘super credits’ that in effect count as two sales in one, in turn allowing BMW to continue making higher-polluting cars such as the M3 without penalty.
Last year some 60% of new cars sold in the UK were to fleets, compared with 48% in 2010, with private car sales dropping from 47% market share to 37% in the same period. Those numbers were mirrored across the 3 Series range, according to BMW UK’s 3 Series product manager James Thompson, further highlighting the 330e’s importance to the German brand. Some 35,000 3 Series will find homes this year, around 10,000 of which will be 330es, and 95% of those 10,000 will go to company car buyers.
If your 330e arrives before the new tax year, you’ll pay either 8% or 12% BIK, depending on with which emissions standard the Treasury wants to correlate the CO2 figure. (You expected the motoring taxation policy to be clearly laid out by now?) Anyway, from 6 April it will be 10% for the plug-in BMW and 0% for pure EVs. Order one now and it won’t be with you before July anyway, so that 10% figure is the most relevant.
This whole topic is one we’ll look at in our news analysis pages in detail in the coming weeks before the tax changes kick in, but take away this for now: company car buyers will be able to save serious money by switching to EVs and plug-in hybrids. And perhaps the best of the plug-in hybrid breed right now is this 330e. It aims to be the 3 Series without compromise, keeping the sporting appeal for which the saloon has always been known but with some attractive cost and economy benefits.
The 330e uses a 181bhp 2.0-litre petrol engine familiar from elsewhere in the 3 Series range. Mounted within its eight-speed automatic gearbox is a 67bhp electric motor (its output increases to 111bhp with an ‘Xtraboost’ function in Sport mode) that powers a 12kWh lithium ion battery. That battery lives under the rear seats, with the fuel tank moving to the boot. The 40-litre fuel tank is 20 litres smaller than that of the non-hybrid 3 Series but results in the 330e’s one key compromise: a 105-litre cut in boot capacity.
The 330e is rear-wheel drive for now; xDrive four-wheel drive comes later this year, when a Touring version will also be introduced. Being rear-wheel drive with a fully integrated electric drive unit means the BMW system is claimed to be seamless in its operation in shifting between electric and petrol power, or a combination of both, as the electric motor sits on the flywheel and isn’t powering an entirely different axle, as is the case with some hybrid systems.
While driving this plug-in BMW is a straightforward process – it can be left in a simple Hybrid setting to leave the car to best decide from which source it should draw power – there are several other driving modes and many more functions to explore, all of which we’ll look at in the months ahead.
While the powertrain may not be as familiar, the specification of our 330e is. M Sport remains a popular trim level for the 3 Series, and it is offered on the 330e alongside entry-level SE and Sport. On top of the M Sport trim, which brings with it the usual array of visual and dynamic sporting upgrades, we have an optional M Sport Plus package that brings bigger 19in alloys, beefier brakes, variable sport steering and, intriguingly, adaptive dampers. This is the first time adaptive dampers have been included in a package – despite typically receiving rave reviews in the media, uptake from buyers had been less than 10%.
It’s rare for long-term reports like this to offer conclusions so early on, but it’s worth pointing out now that the 330e will not be suitable for all 3 Series buyers, specifically private buyers who won’t enjoy the tax benefits of company car buyers.
For them, offsetting the 330e’s list price against the potential money saved in fuel will be negligible, unless nearly all journeys are within the 35-mile electric-only range, at which point you may as well just buy a Tesla Model 3 for very similar money – or a BMW M340i, as Thompson says many private buyers are doing.
Not only is this our first long-term test of a hybrid 3 Series but it is also our first extended taste of a 3 Series in this G20 generation, which has already earned a five-star road test rating in 320d form. Finding out how much of that magic remains in this 330e will make for a fascinating few months to come.
*Second Opinion*
The 330e has been a favourite of mine since I drove a skinny-tyred Sporttrim version of the last generation. The G20 is quicker and does 20 urban miles on its battery without trying too hard. But, as with so many more modestly powered cars, smaller wheels and less grip makes for more driver appeal.
*Matt Saunders*
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-BMW 3 Series 330e M Sport specification-
*Specs: Price New* £39,860 *Price as tested* £49,300 *Options*M Sport Plus package £2200, Technology package £1900, Premium package £1700, Visibility package £1500, Comfort package £990, Aluminium mesh effect interior trim £650, Vernasca leather seats £500
*Test Data: Engine* 4 cyls in line, 1998cc, turbocharged, petrol, plus electric motor *Power* 289bhp at 5000-6500rpm *Torque* 310lb ft at 1350-4250rpm *Kerb weight* 1660kg *Top speed* 143mph *0-62mph* 6.0sec *Fuel economy* 58.1mpg *CO2* 39g/km *Faults* None *Expenses* None
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