Alright, so this baggage check wasn’t actually performed on our long-term 2022 BMW 330e. For some motive, John Snyder did not wish to spend 34 hours driving 2,350 miles to Oregon to ensure that me to throw some baggage within the plug-in hybrid 3 Collection then flip round and drive again. I supplied him some doughnuts and a six-pack of one thing good, however “Ah, no thanks,” he stated. Wonderful then, be that manner.
Fortunately, I luggage-tested a 330e again in April 2021. Particularly, I in contrast it to the common 3 Collection for the needs of demonstrating how a lot house you lose when stuffing a bunch of batteries beneath a part of the cargo flooring.
The M340i is on the left and the 330e is on the proper. The ground between the wheels is clearly larger within the plug-in hybrid.
However yeah, what is going on on with the ground within the 330e?
The ground panel bends and lowers to extend house, or, create a standard flat flooring. It’s extremely simple to do that and the panel is well-engineered.
If something, it looks as if the decrease place could be a bit decrease than the M340i’s. Though solely barely, and there is no manner across the truth this provides the plug-in hybrid a definite drawback.
On to the bags. As with each baggage check, I take advantage of two midsize curler suitcases that may must be checked in on the airport (26 inches lengthy, 16 vast, 11 deep), two roll-aboard suitcases that simply barely match within the overhead (24L x 15W x 10D), and one smaller roll-aboard that matches simply (23L x 15W x 10D). I additionally embody my spouse’s fancy in a single day bag simply to spruce issues up a bit (21L x 12W x 12D).
First, the bizarre flooring does make it arduous to load baggage, notably with the hill within the center. It took a few Tetris makes an attempt to seek out the utmost of my baggage.
So, what is the distinction? The M340i may match the 5 greatest baggage, however the smallest (fancy) bag needed to keep behind. The 330e may match the 5 smallest baggage, together with the flowery one, however the greatest bag needed to keep behind. There was room left over in every for a big procuring bag and different extraneous gadgets.
On paper, the 330e trunk has 4 fewer cubic-feet of house in comparison with a gas-only 3 Collection. That checks out with this check. Formally, its 13.2 cubic-feet of quantity, however as we have seen a number of occasions, BMW should be utilizing a special measurement technique than the remainder of the business since its trunk quantity figures are persistently larger than what the house itself would recommend.
In observe, the 330e trunk appears corresponding to the ten.9-cubic-foot trunk within the Cadillac CT4.