ChargeForward

Last year, BMW announced the first trial of its ‘ChargeForward’ program to recruit BMW i3 owners willing to automatically delay the charging of their vehicle at the request of the local electric utility, PG&E, in order to offset peak demand.

This week BMW released the findings of the trial, which it deems successful, and it announced a second round of the program with more BMW i3 owners and for a longer period of time. 
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At the moment, electric vehicles are not a burden on the electric grid. The energy demand for electric cars is only a drop in the massive bucket that is the electric infrastructure of developed countries, but it could change fast with the demand for EVs steadily increasing. BMW is one of the rare big automaker embracing the industry’s transition from combustion engines to electric powertrains and the company expects EVs to account for a significant portion of the electricity demand in the future.

To limit the effect of EVs on the grid’s capacity, BMW is testing a program to incentivize BMW i3 owners to charge their cars at specific hours of the day when the demand is low. Last week they launched the initiative under the program: “BMW i ChargeForward”. 
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