Cost of owning a BMW i3

Just look at the cost of brakes. An ICE car will need them every 30-60k miles depending on various factors, but an electric car will need them every 100-200k miles.

I wouldn't trust anything about BMW or other premium German brands from a US source as an EU customer, because:

1) US (and Canadian, Australian, Malaysian) fuel is of much lower quality, and BMW engines are notoriously sensitive to this. As an example, the BMW I own wasn't ever sold in North America or these other markets because of the high sulfur content in the fuel.

2) US consumers who buy BMW are going to have a selection bias towards people buying muscle cars. You're not just looking at reliability numbers, but numbers skewed by Americans who'd buy a foreign luxury vehicle with a powerful engine.

3) BMW is fickle about its maintenance requirements, and generally the further you get away from Germany the worse your quality of maintenance and ability to source genuine parts easily is going to be.

BMW is still pretty bad when it comes to total cost of ownership, but this German study of vehicles on EU roads shows it isn't quite that bad: https://europe.jdpower.com/de/press-releases/2019-germany-ve...

So just because you have a certain kind of car doesn't mean you will always have the same tire wear or cost.

Engine inside is small one from motorcycle, so it shouldn’t be hard to service. I was considering buying i3, but went for 328i.

Buy a 400BHP+ Ferrari or 911 and you can get car tyre life right down to similar levels. They'll now be $300-$500+ a corner for being super wide, super low profile, sticky things. $2,000 in tyres every service... A sporty V8 of a couple of decades ago could easily give 6k miles front, 3k back. With higher powers now, who knows.

If you could get really cheap clunker type rubber for those cars, you'd probably be just a few miles from wrapping it round a lamp post. First time you press the loud pedal with enthusiasm most likely. :)

Similarly, heavy duty truck tires are more expensive as they have more engineering requirements.

Note that I'm not against electric cars at all. I'm only talking about pollution of microplastics. Not pollution in general.

Of course it's hard to tell if people downvote because they disagree with me or because there are actually falsehoods in my comment. If it's the latter it's either: 1) electric cars are not heavier, or 2) tire wear due to additional weight is neglectable. Please, correct me if I'm wrong. Perhaps it's my filter bubble, but I only find articles that support my statement [2]. I quote:

"For energy use, the weight is less of a problem than for gasoline cars. They waste the increased energy used to accelerate the higher weight. But the momentum of an electric car lets you return energy to the battery as the car slows. The heavier the car, the more energy it takes to accelerate—but the more you return to the battery commensurately through regenerative braking.

Of course, if you pay six figures for a high-performance electric car (think Tesla Model S P100D) and use its capabilities, you should expect to replace your very expensive low-profile tires every 15,000 miles or so. That's par for the segment."

[2] https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1122838_busting-7-of-th...

Most of your yearly distance would be covered by purely electric driving, yet you would not have range anxiety and you could still make those long trips with your car as well.

Would also be good for the environment as one wouldn't need to tie needless resources for a rarely needed big battery.

If you total your car and you have good insurance, you might get reimbursed its remaining value, which might be about market, or nothing. If you have a loan out on the car, better hope it didn't depreciate faster than the loan payment takes, or you take a loss. Or maybe you don't total it, sell it privately, and get more than on a trade-in. You don't know what the market will bear, you don't even know if you'll have ended up with a lemon. But even if you do get money back at the end, how old it is, whether its insurance or maintenance costs more, etc will all affect sales later.

I think purchasing a car with an expectation to regain value is gambling. I'd prefer to buy something I'll drive into the dirt, whether used or new, for a more certain financial outcome.