Tim Lucas, MD (B2B and Transport) at Fleet News' parent company Bauer Media, has a BMW i3 on test this week. Here's day two, after his first journeys.

My first two journeys are complete. Last night I had an uneventful homeward trip. Cold, dark and a few snags on the A14 but nothing exceptional. The car handled well, no noticeable difference to my usual VW CC bar the added height and visibility of the i3.

The i3 displayed an electric/petrol range of 65/63 miles at the start of my journey. By the end I had travelled 82 miles and still had 4/78 miles left. The range extender kicked in after 64 miles with a dull throb coming from the rear of the vehicle.

I drove with the i3 in Eco Pro mode which has a different accelerator pedal mapping and uses less power than the standard Comfort mode. Driving at an average speed of around 55mph, my actual range was 164 miles – just about matching the claimed range of the i3 Rex in Comfort mode.

This morning the car had successfully charged at home (another slice of anxiety falls away) and my daughter, two sons and I piled into the car for the school bus run. Everyone was comfortable, all bags were stowed in the boot and only positive comments came from the backseat.

The school bus run added around 8 miles of rural driving to my work journey but this impacted quite significantly on the range. At the start the range was 75/62 (petrol/electric) and after 90 miles I still had 2/47 left. This gave an actual range of 139 miles, again in the Eco Pro mode.

The range extender started a little earlier after 57 miles. Driving conditions were not significantly different to last night’s journey and I put the difference in range down to the rural nature of my additional miles as well as the need to de-ice the front windscreen for our early morning start. But, all in all, my range and recharging anxieties are significantly diminished with two journeys under my belt.