And it’s awesome.
To better explain my rather OTT opening comment, let me explain.
First read about the i3 around a year ago. Interesting looking specs, so have been waiting a long time to get in one. Even more so in reality as very few BMW dealers actually have one. I had to go to Croydon to check one out.
Note also that Croydon had an i8 in stock which I had a sit in. Awesome exterior styling, does have rear seats, but it’s really a 2+2. Has boot space = to an MR2 mk3, i.e. around two crash helmets. No under bonnet storage, which rather surprised me as I’ve no idea what they’ve put in there. Biggest let down is the interior. Just too alike to a £50k BMW and doesn’t really feel special enough for a £100k car.
Now, back to the i3:
Exterior styling. Easy enough to google and make your own mind up. To me, looks like BMW checked out the old Audi A2 and simply wished to make it more “interesting”. Certainly not a pretty car, but bearing in mind the dimensions the stylists had to work with, it’s OK. Note also the very large diameter, but very thin tyres. Apparently that reduces drag but maintains the contact point for the tyres. Does mean that replacing them is likely to be expensive as they’re not exactly a common dimension.
Interior. Overall, I like it. The most obvious difference to the norm is the suicide rear doors, which allowed really easy access to both front and rear, they got my thumbs up. For info, the seat belts for the front seats are built into the rear doors. It’s not that big a car (again, think old A2), so will only fit four, but it has plenty of headroom. Boot is probably around that of a Fabia/A2/Polo, and the rear seats fold completely flat. The materials are the most interesting part. They’ve used recycled cardboard or similar for the upper part of the dashboard, and it looks and feels actually rather nice, with a nice mat finish to prevent glare. The interior feels really fresh and is IMO massively more interesting than the usual “high quality plastics” that most manufacturers are striving for. Seats were OK, i.e. better than most cars I’ve sat in (definitely better than my mothers Honda Jazz), but weren’t as comfortable as the BMW sports seats in my own E91. The dash consists of two LCD screens (maybe LED, no idea). The biggest of the two is the sat nav/car control screen and it’s a LOT bigger than most existing sat navs, and is very legible. The other sits infront of you and replaces the usual dials, with a digital speedo reading. Both appears to be high res and I had no issues reading either due to glare. Having no gears, the “gearbox” control is just a D or R and sits on a rotary control just above the wiper controls. The handbrake is an electronic one.
Note than the rear windows are fixed and cannot be wound down.
Technology. By default comes with electric motors driving the rear wheels with a probably optimistic range of upto 100 miles. No idea what it’ll actually achieve. The two cylinder petrol engine option is not in any way connected to the rear wheels (according the salesman) and only charges the batteries to extend range (like the Chevvy volt). An interesting question is therefore whether driving the car at say 70mph will discharge the batteries faster than the petrol engine and re-charge them, don’t know the answer to that. Apparently it can be re-charged from a normal mains plug, but also has the option of a dedicated charger, which I assume will charge it faster. The salesman did say that in theory you could keep topping up petrol in the range extender version and drive for say 500 miles, but he wouldn’t recommend it. One interesting point was that the menu options allow you specify when the car will start taking charge. So you might wish to make use of charge electricity post say 1am, and also have the car start warming up it’s heated seats via the mains 15 mins before you actually wish to use the car on cold mornings. Not exactly critical, but a nice touch.
And the drive. As mentioned, for me the seats were just OK, nothing special. Ride quality was also OK and felt similar to my mother’s Jazz, i.e. typical tall hatchback, i.e. a little more bouncy than say my SE E91. Certainly wasn’t harsh, and personally I could live with it, but you’d not mistake it for an S class.
Pulling away, just completely quiet. I read that when Nissan developed the Leaf, than they found they had to put special effort into the road noise as with so little engine noise, normal road noise was more apparent. This is clearly also the case on the i3, which was VERY quiet in use. I only drove for around 5 miles, but it felt very natural, just like driving a normal car. What was interesting was the retardation when you lifted off the throttle. It felt like I was driving a manual car in second gear, with that level of deceleration. In practice, the car was setup to regenerate the batteries as against just coast like say a typical automatic would do. During my drive, meant that I only needed to brake twice (apart from when I stopped at lights ), meaning that progress was very smooth. The real “hoot” factor was the acceleration. Just instantly available and tons of it. Sure, the car might be restricted to 93mph (i.e. more than adequate), at road legal speeds the acceleration was phenomenal. To achieve the same in my 330i, I’d have needed to drop several gears then completely floor the accelerator. Couldn’t help but smile as I’m sure the i3 would easily embarrass a number of hot hatches for in gear low speed acceleration.
Money side. Base costs are around £30k for the electric only version, with another £3k for the range extender. I did a quick “build” on the website and ended up easily adding another £4k of extras. So pushing towards £40k. Making up for that, running costs will be very low. The salesman was talking about 2p/mile equivalent for fuel, which is probably very optimistic, but does mean the equivalent of around 300mpg if used on just electricity when compared to the fuel costs of say our existing petrol E91.
For me, I’d save around £2500/annum due to savings in fuel, MOT, servicing and road tax. It is eligible for the £5k discount for EVs.
Personally the economics just don’t add up as I’m quite happy running an older car. However, if you have to have a brand new car, it becomes more interesting.
The real target though is probably the company car drivers. The BIK is 5%, meaning that when compared to say running a 320D, than you’d be paying something like 70% less tax a month, assuming a similarly priced 3 series.
In summary, if you don’t need to genuinely long distances, or need lots of space, this really is the future. No, it’s not perfect, the ride and seats (whilst OK, were nothing special), but I thought it was ace. If I were to be allocated a company car, I’d certainly have this in my hit list of cars to consider.
To better explain my rather OTT opening comment, let me explain.
First read about the i3 around a year ago. Interesting looking specs, so have been waiting a long time to get in one. Even more so in reality as very few BMW dealers actually have one. I had to go to Croydon to check one out.
Note also that Croydon had an i8 in stock which I had a sit in. Awesome exterior styling, does have rear seats, but it’s really a 2+2. Has boot space = to an MR2 mk3, i.e. around two crash helmets. No under bonnet storage, which rather surprised me as I’ve no idea what they’ve put in there. Biggest let down is the interior. Just too alike to a £50k BMW and doesn’t really feel special enough for a £100k car.
Now, back to the i3:
Exterior styling. Easy enough to google and make your own mind up. To me, looks like BMW checked out the old Audi A2 and simply wished to make it more “interesting”. Certainly not a pretty car, but bearing in mind the dimensions the stylists had to work with, it’s OK. Note also the very large diameter, but very thin tyres. Apparently that reduces drag but maintains the contact point for the tyres. Does mean that replacing them is likely to be expensive as they’re not exactly a common dimension.
Interior. Overall, I like it. The most obvious difference to the norm is the suicide rear doors, which allowed really easy access to both front and rear, they got my thumbs up. For info, the seat belts for the front seats are built into the rear doors. It’s not that big a car (again, think old A2), so will only fit four, but it has plenty of headroom. Boot is probably around that of a Fabia/A2/Polo, and the rear seats fold completely flat. The materials are the most interesting part. They’ve used recycled cardboard or similar for the upper part of the dashboard, and it looks and feels actually rather nice, with a nice mat finish to prevent glare. The interior feels really fresh and is IMO massively more interesting than the usual “high quality plastics” that most manufacturers are striving for. Seats were OK, i.e. better than most cars I’ve sat in (definitely better than my mothers Honda Jazz), but weren’t as comfortable as the BMW sports seats in my own E91. The dash consists of two LCD screens (maybe LED, no idea). The biggest of the two is the sat nav/car control screen and it’s a LOT bigger than most existing sat navs, and is very legible. The other sits infront of you and replaces the usual dials, with a digital speedo reading. Both appears to be high res and I had no issues reading either due to glare. Having no gears, the “gearbox” control is just a D or R and sits on a rotary control just above the wiper controls. The handbrake is an electronic one.
Note than the rear windows are fixed and cannot be wound down.
Technology. By default comes with electric motors driving the rear wheels with a probably optimistic range of upto 100 miles. No idea what it’ll actually achieve. The two cylinder petrol engine option is not in any way connected to the rear wheels (according the salesman) and only charges the batteries to extend range (like the Chevvy volt). An interesting question is therefore whether driving the car at say 70mph will discharge the batteries faster than the petrol engine and re-charge them, don’t know the answer to that. Apparently it can be re-charged from a normal mains plug, but also has the option of a dedicated charger, which I assume will charge it faster. The salesman did say that in theory you could keep topping up petrol in the range extender version and drive for say 500 miles, but he wouldn’t recommend it. One interesting point was that the menu options allow you specify when the car will start taking charge. So you might wish to make use of charge electricity post say 1am, and also have the car start warming up it’s heated seats via the mains 15 mins before you actually wish to use the car on cold mornings. Not exactly critical, but a nice touch.
And the drive. As mentioned, for me the seats were just OK, nothing special. Ride quality was also OK and felt similar to my mother’s Jazz, i.e. typical tall hatchback, i.e. a little more bouncy than say my SE E91. Certainly wasn’t harsh, and personally I could live with it, but you’d not mistake it for an S class.
Pulling away, just completely quiet. I read that when Nissan developed the Leaf, than they found they had to put special effort into the road noise as with so little engine noise, normal road noise was more apparent. This is clearly also the case on the i3, which was VERY quiet in use. I only drove for around 5 miles, but it felt very natural, just like driving a normal car. What was interesting was the retardation when you lifted off the throttle. It felt like I was driving a manual car in second gear, with that level of deceleration. In practice, the car was setup to regenerate the batteries as against just coast like say a typical automatic would do. During my drive, meant that I only needed to brake twice (apart from when I stopped at lights ), meaning that progress was very smooth. The real “hoot” factor was the acceleration. Just instantly available and tons of it. Sure, the car might be restricted to 93mph (i.e. more than adequate), at road legal speeds the acceleration was phenomenal. To achieve the same in my 330i, I’d have needed to drop several gears then completely floor the accelerator. Couldn’t help but smile as I’m sure the i3 would easily embarrass a number of hot hatches for in gear low speed acceleration.
Money side. Base costs are around £30k for the electric only version, with another £3k for the range extender. I did a quick “build” on the website and ended up easily adding another £4k of extras. So pushing towards £40k. Making up for that, running costs will be very low. The salesman was talking about 2p/mile equivalent for fuel, which is probably very optimistic, but does mean the equivalent of around 300mpg if used on just electricity when compared to the fuel costs of say our existing petrol E91.
For me, I’d save around £2500/annum due to savings in fuel, MOT, servicing and road tax. It is eligible for the £5k discount for EVs.
Personally the economics just don’t add up as I’m quite happy running an older car. However, if you have to have a brand new car, it becomes more interesting.
The real target though is probably the company car drivers. The BIK is 5%, meaning that when compared to say running a 320D, than you’d be paying something like 70% less tax a month, assuming a similarly priced 3 series.
In summary, if you don’t need to genuinely long distances, or need lots of space, this really is the future. No, it’s not perfect, the ride and seats (whilst OK, were nothing special), but I thought it was ace. If I were to be allocated a company car, I’d certainly have this in my hit list of cars to consider.
