I'm now almost six weeks into driving this thing, between myself and Sarah we've covered 1,355 miles, and I'm liking electrical propulsion (and this car in particular) more and more with every passing mile. My thought's so far...
Design? It's wonderful. The aloominum chassis, aloominum suspension, aloominum nuts, bolts, and washers holding all the aloominum mechanical bits together. The exposed carbon mat construction of the passenger cell, the naked carbon polymer roof, the way the carbon polymer body panels bend and flex in and out when you close the door. The ridiculously huge 20 inch wheels (more on those in a minute) which allow you to see all the aloominum suspension arms and linkages and chassis behind. The bicycle thin tyres giving reduced drag but with grip recovered by way of the larger rolling circumference. The honeycomb lightweight wiper arms, the lightweight thin-backed front seats, it's so well conceived.
Yet despite being made of plastic, it genuinely feels just like a RWD BMW should feel to drive. It feels solid, it communicates as much as my M140i ever did (not very much), and it feels very well screwed together.
The EV side of it all has been eye opening from a driver's viewpoint. Range is no issue for me as I charge at work so each day I get home with 170 miles remaining, so it's fallen into being a family workhorse, swimming lesson drop-offs, dump trips, the lot.
And what's really good is, as an EV it never has to warm up, it's out of my cul-de-sac at full pelt, every single time. I drive it like an absolute bell-end everywhere because why the f*** wouldn't you, especially when no one really knows what you're doing because no loud exhaust revs blaring and zero tyre noise! In the morning my jump out onto the A123 is all the more relaxed because I can just spot a gap and pin the throttle whereas in the Cayman I was always considering how quickly I could pull out and get up to speed because the engine had only been running for 3 minutes...
Side note; I've discovered the best way to launch is to engage the parking/handbrake before flooring it in Sport mode. Without the handbrake engaged it smoothly squeezes power on as it gets rolling, but with it engaged it comes in far more abruptly giving me a vital half car length jump away from the lights...
Lastly, back to those 20s...
In my mind the i3 is a small car, it has the proportions of a small car. The big wheels make the body shrink around it and not having driven one I felt like I was getting something Fiesta sized at best. Parked alongside my Cayman and Lewis' RS4 I thought Google Pixel image manipulation was why it looked so massive.
Having given it a hand wash recently it went like "f*** me, this roof panel's big. F*** me, these doors are huge. F*** me, there's a lot to these wheels" etc. etc.
BREAKING NEWS; it isn't a small car. At all. Internally it's not far off my C-Max.
Which makes the fact that it weighs in at only 1,265 kgs all the more remarkable. And it drives just as you'd expect a 1,265 kg car with 184 bhp and 200 lbs ft of instant torque with thin tyres would. Bravo BMW. Bravo.
