Tom Moloughney, the owner of Montclair's popular Nauna's Bella Casa, now has another claim to fame: He is the first customer to receive BMW's latest electric car. In a special ceremony last Friday, Ludwig Willisch, president and chief executive officer of BMW North America, presented Moloughney and his wife Meredith the keys to the ActiveE, a 100 percent electric car that is the successor to the electric Mini-E. For the past 2 1/2 years, Moloughney has been testing the Mini-E for BMW.
Molougney and his wife drove their Mini-E from their home in Chester, N.J., to BMW's headquarters in Woodcliff Lake, N.J., where they traded it in for the ActiveE.
At that moment, they became "Electronauts," as the carmaker put it.
The ActiveE is BMW's next step toward mass producing an emission-free electric car to sell to consumers.
"It's a BMW. It rides like a dream," Moloughney said of the ActiveE. "It's 100 percent electric. It has four seats and a trunk. The Mini was just a two-seater."
The Moloughneys are the first of what will be 700 "Electronaut" households who will lease a BMW ActiveE for a two-year period.
Moloughney is a vocal proponent of electric cars, and his two-year spin with the Mini-E has been featured in publications such as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
"Calling the Moloughneys pioneers is very appropriate because they have shown the world that an electric vehicle can absolutely serve one's daily driving needs without compromise," Willisch said in a statement. "We learned a lot from all of our experience with the Mini-E and we are looking forward to learning more in these next two years with the BMW ActiveE as we prepare for the launch of the first BMW i models in 2013. We are pleased that Tom and Meredith have agreed to stay with us on this journey."
Last week, the Moloughneys had lunch with the managers of BMW's electric vehicle program in Woodcliff Lake, and Willisch came in to introduce himself. Then the couple got a tour of the technical facility that BMW has in Woodcliff Lake.
"They're building out a whole electric-vehicle area to accommodate their future electric vehicles," Moloughney said. "They're dedicating a big area where they're going to have all the battery operations, and all the electronics testing, so we got a tour of all that. It was really nice. They showed me one of the cars that I have that was completely disassembled. They pulled all the batteries out, all the electronics and showed me all the reinforcement they put in to protect the batteries in case of a crash."
Moloughney then did some video interviews, and Willisch gave him the keys to his new leased ride.
"This car is fully engineered as a BMW product," Moloughney said. "All of the electric motors and controllers and the batteries are all newly developed all in-house with BMW. This is the last step before they sell an electric car. They're going to sell an electric car in about 18 months. It's called the BMW i3. This car has all the components that's going to be in the i3. We're field-testing it for them."
The ActiveE can accelerate from zero to 60 mph in less than nine seconds, and its newly developed lithium-ion batteries give it a driving range of up to 100 miles on a full charge.
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