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Comment by flavoie | Hacker News Reader

Because they never market it seriously. Where I live, it was a challenge to try one, even harder to find a salesman that can sell you the car. Nearly nobody knows about that car.

It's the only car in the industry that took seriously sustainability. (Sustainable textile, recycled material, end of life reusability and recycling. etc.)

The efficiency is excellent, about 5kwh less per 100km than a tesla. It drives great, it's powerful, fun to drive. I haven't found a i3 owner that didn't like his car yet.

With the range extender it removed range anxiety without add long recharge time on a trip. (granted with more frequent stop)

I bought a used one last week. Maybe it's the honey moon, but it's the best car I have ever own, by far.

The lack of leadership from top executive made the car unpopular, not the car itself. This also led to a lot of employee turnover because the lack of seriousness about the i series.

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The i3 may be a good car for you, but it's not an alternative to a person considering a 3 or 5 series. That's the miss. While the car may be great, it's target market is small. In the US the i3 has a very small set of buyers and those buyers, if not BMW fans, will likely buy a Model 3 or Chevy Volt before the BMW. Both cars are more bang for the buck and can handle small families better/cheaper. The i3, with the range extender, basically turns the car into a hybrid - which exemplifies BMWs miss on what people want in an EV. If I'm going to buy an EV I don't want all the maintenance hassle of dealing with IC.

There have been many cars in history that have been popular beyond what top leadership has said. The failure of the i3 isn't that. It's a car that has a very small target market. If that was their goal, that's fine. But if they thought it was going to sell well BMW dropped the ball.

Regardless, it's good for you since you likely got a great deal.

> with the range extender, basically turns the car into a hybrid

That's not fair since (unless you mod it) the REX only kicks in when you get to 6% battery. In the year I have been driving the i3 I have used less then a gallon of gas.

What's not fair? That the range isn't that of it's EV peers and so instead of address this with longer range batteries BMW made a cognizant decision to give buyers the option of a hybrid? Think about your statement: "In the year I have been driving the i3 I have used less then a gallon of gas." That would terrify me more than dealing with electric range for extended trips from time to time. Why? Because gasoline has a shelf life and all IC components are generally built and expected to run on a frequent basis. If that engine truly didn't run for almost a year, and let's say that is normal for i3 owners, then BMW is going to have a large number of those "range extender" customers needing repair for failed injectors and/or fuel pumps. I don't know enough about the i3 but I'm guessing it runs by force over the year, even if not required, to overcome this? Even then you have the issue of stale, non-stabilized gas.

Yeah it runs for 10 minutes each month. The motor is from a BMW moped so the maintenance should be simpler than a regular car engine plus it is never heavily loaded - always runs at optimum RPM. I occasionally put in a 1/4 gallon to freshen it up.

The i3 isn't even in the same family as the 3 and even less the 5. Think more a Toyota C-HR, Mini Cooper, maybe Fiat 500.

That's exactly my point.

Well but underlying your point was an assumption that the 3 and 5 competed against the i3 at all. It's not a "miss" that someone in the market for a pickup truck passes on the BMWs, either.

I kind of think BMW has generally lost its way. Their model line is bananas. They're great cars in some ways but damn the electronics are a pain in my ass! Like the battery registration--no reason why you can't add a menu that tells the computer "new battery installed" oh no, can't do that, have to have dealer-level software and equipment. I had to buy a code reader type tool for $150 that can do that instead of it just being a built-in feature. This is design for purely post sales profit margin enhancement.

Also, why do automakers keep taking the spare tires away? If you live near a city, well, great, but anyone who lives outside of "town" needs to be self-sufficient.

I appreciate a lot about the car, but its time is almost up. There are some screwy German things about it that just get more annoying as time goes by and lots of things broke before even 50K miles that never broke on Toyotas and Hondas I owned. BMW needs to go back to making cars, not computers on wheels.

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