Farewell, BMW i3: how electric vehicles have changed the face of motoring Car News

We are in 2013 and the BMW i3 has just been launched.

Think again: The world was thankfully Covid-free, we were still three years away from TikToking teenagers, Prince Harry was pals with his brother and no one had yet thought that throwing a bucket of ice water over your head would lead to millions in charitable donations.

It’s like there is a lifetime, and in terms of a car, it was. Nine years is a life cycle and a half in most models, but here we are today, still looking for a new i3 and still amazed. And mourn it, because production will stop in July.

It was presented as a future classic, no less than in our recent Autocar-Beaulieu Future Classics competition, and it’s no wonder. There were other EVs before the i3 (hell, BMW itself had one with the Mini E test fleet), but the i3 is the one that felt – and still feels – like it did. it defined an era. A movement, even.

Why? I think it’s down to the integrity of the idea: the i3 was born electric.

In 2010, BMW unveiled the Megacity concept (and later used it at the London Olympics) as a radical carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) passenger cell on an aluminum chassis – a system that was so strong structurally it didn’t need B-pillars. Hence the incredible rear hinged rear doors were possible.

The bottom line is that the production car adheres to that mantra, with the same emphasis on sustainability, recycled materials and those doors, that had made the original concept such a head turner.

The CFRP passenger cell has remained, so the i3 is a featherweight by EV standards: just 1290kg, even with the largest modern battery on board. The 2012 Renault Zoe weighed 1465 kg, which is 300 kg more than the i3 from the same period.

Two powertrains were available at the time: all-electric with 168hp and a claimed range of 80-100 miles, and a range extender with the same engine plus a 647cc two-cylinder petrol motorcycle engine for charging the battery on the go.

Above all, BMW has developed its own electric motor for the i3, with its own characteristic torque curve. It’s more stable at high revs, which the company continues to actively pursue.

You can still feel it now. The i3 is quick from 0 to 30 mph, as with any other electric car, but the power doesn’t diminish. You don’t feel like you’ve hit a soft limiter, like you do in some other EVs, so it’s a wonderfully rich throttle curve, like in the Porsche Taycan. As a result, it doesn’t look like nine-year-old technology. In fact, better battery technology means the i3 can now claim nearly 180 miles on a charge.

It can sit you quite high, but its rear-wheel drive and precise steering make it brilliant to drive, with an agility and precision that many EVs lack.

The i3 is a lesson in how lightness makes a better car, proving that BMW’s rigorous application of carving out kilograms wherever it could has reaped rewards. Even the screws and bolts for the doors are aluminum, saving crucial grams, and the wiper has a honeycomb structure. As a result, you can feel the integrity of the project. It’s still special, even now.

At launch, people were instantly hooked. Michael Ani, once chief exterior designer at Audi and head of his own car design consultancy Makkina for 24 years, took a passenger to the Frankfurt Motor Show in 2013 and never looked back. . He is now on his second i3 and has persuaded 10 of his friends to buy one. As he explains, “I thought there couldn’t be anything better. Honestly, all these years later, it’s the same: the combination of power, silence and that beautiful lounge-like interior that’s still very modern.

With her background in design, Ani touches on something interesting: “It’s classless, which is a rare quality in a car. It doesn’t fit into any particular category and it’s really its own thing. For a brand that has sometimes suffered from less than stellar ownership associations with certain cars, the i3 is the friendliest.

Not that everything went BMW’s way. Despite the i3’s praise, sales never reached the heights achieved by the Nissan Leaf. In 10 years, the Leaf has managed 500,000 units, while the BMW is at 250,000 over nine years. Wieland Bruch, BMW Group spokesman, corporate and intergovernmental affairs, said the i3 had done the right thing for BMW, but the company believed the regulations would encourage faster adoption of electric vehicles. Legislators and governments, as always, are not moving at the speed of big business. A decade of low fuel prices hasn’t helped either.

Likewise, BMW owners may not have been ready for the i3’s drastic change. “In the beginning, more than 70% of i3 buyers were from other brands,” says Bruch. “Of course we had internal criticism. What we tried with the i3 was so different from our…