2015 BMW i3 Review: Best City Car Ever Created
What’s Hot: Lively acceleration, liberty from petrol stations, cool interior.
What’s Not: Firm ride, overly-sensitive steering, lacking luggage space.
X-FACTOR: The i3 shows the world exactly why electric cars make so much sense in an urban environment. If you want to see what the future will look like, drive one.
Vehicle Style: 5-door small hatch
Price: $63,900 (plus on-roads)
Engine/trans: 125kW/250Nm electric motor | single-speed transmission
Energy consumption claimed: 12.9kWh/100km | tested: 14.9kWh/100km
OVERVIEW
Blade Runner, Minority Report, Back To The Future II... all of these films had two things in common: they were set in the future, and the cars looked weird.
And that brings me to the BMW i3. Definitely an odd-looking unit, but absolutely dripping with futurism.
It wouldn't look out of place on the set of a sci-fi movie, and the way it drives is a peek into what lies ahead in the world of motoring.
The concept behind our $63,900 i3 is certainly like nothing else, with a lightweight chassis made from space-age materials propelled solely by electric power and furnished with eco-friendly materials.
And by running on electricity rather than fossil fuels, it promises to not only leave more money in our wallets, but reduce our dependence on a rapidly disappearing - and increasingly expensive - resource.
But what of the compromises? What of its reduced range compared to its petrol-powered brethren, its higher purchase cost and the incovenience of waiting hours - not minutes - to recharge its batteries?
To answer these questions, we took an all-electric i3 for a four-day test.
While it's not without its flaws, it's apparent that the i3 is pretty much the best thing around if all you need is a compact commuter car.
THE INTERIOR | RATING: 5/5
Quality: While the switchgear is recognisably BMW, there are many aspects of the i3’s interior that will seem foreign - and a touch exotic - to existing BMW owners.
And that’s because much of the i3’s cabin is made of new materials that place an emphasis on renewability, recyclability and lightness.
Materials like Eucalyptus wood, wool, compressed kenaf fibres and carbon fibre. There’s leather also, and it’s tanned using an eco-friendly olive leaf extract rather than traditional tanning chemicals.
Elsewhere there are typical BMW plastics, both hard and soft, and the overall cabin ambience is premium, but not pretentious.
Electric Cars