Here's Why the BMW i3 Absolutely Isn't Worth $50,000

It is a BMW i3, a small egg-shaped BMW electric hatchback, with only 170 horsepower and a range of only 157 kilometers with its electric motor, or about 240 kilometers if we add the expandable gasoline engine like this one that it has. for the privilege of owning this vehicle bmw charges a base price of 50,000 shouldn't they now i rented this i3 with its blue plastic dipped wheels

here

in atlanta at hartsfield-jackson international airport using turo which is this service that allows you to rent other cool and interesting cars from people like this, instead of the normal boring airport rental cars, you can sign up for turo using the link in the description below and get 25 off your first rental and you can also check out the link to the turo app in the description in In today's video, I'm going to focus on why this car isn't

worth

50,000;

In fact, $50k is just w

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it starts. Equip this car with all the options and you'll get a sticker price of 62,000 for this small electric hatchback. now i admit no one is paying 62k, the US federal government has a 7500 tax rebate for electric cars like this which drives the price down and bmw dealers are aggressively pushing discounts to get these things out there market, but still at some point someone at BMW looked at this car and said that little egg-shaped electric hatchback. Yes, let's price it just below m3. The main reason this is a problem is competition.

Consider that the Tesla Model 3 has more than twice the range of the BMW i3 and yet starts 8,000 cheaper, the new Nissan Leaf will travel 151 miles on a single charge, that's 54 miles more than the i3 and, however its base price is 15k cheaper the i3 just isn't

worth

what BMW is asking and that shows on the second hand market right now as I record this there are hundreds of used i3s on autotrader for less At twenty thousand dollars, some with clean tiles and miles as low as 13,000, has to be the worst depreciation in the car business, but with all that said, Like the i3, I just don't think it's worth 50 thousand dollars.

The styling has polarized some, but I think it looks cool, modern and original, and it's one of the few cars that still looks like a new model four years after it came out. It's also packed with cool quirks and cool features, so today I'm going to show you all of them, then get behind the wheel and drive it, then give it an excellent rating, and more. For my thoughts on the i3, click the link below to visit autotrader.com oversteer, where I've also compiled a list of the cheapest electric cars currently for sale on autotrader. Now I'm going to start with a couple of interesting i3s. quirks here starting with the BMW kidney grills this car like all BMWs has these two front grills that everyone knows BMWs have except on this car they are fake they are not real this car has no engine here up top, so it doesn't need a grille to allow air in, but because it's such a distinctive design element, BMW kept them, so they're there just to make it look like a BMW.

Now, to make it clear that these grills are unnecessary, I should mention that there is a trunk under here. Yes, this is a hatchback with a cargo area in the back, but because the entire electric motor is at the bottom of the car, the front space is not used for that, so now they have a trunk under here, which is interesting. The nice thing about this trunk is that to access it you press a little button in the driver's footwell and then you fumble a little latch up here like a normal car engine and then the front trunk opens, it's not big, but you could carry some things here if you can't fit them in the cargo area now.

If you like cars, you've seen a lot of i3s driving around, you'll probably wonder why this one says electric knot, well, it turns. Our electro knot was a special edition of the early i3 and included some cool features, for example this one had fast charging capability which was optional, it also had heated seats and came with blue license plate frames but his car didn't come with blue license plate frames, it also comes with many badges, besides the electro no badge on the front grill, there is also an electronic badge on the front doors, if you open the doors, there is an electro knot badge on the door sill and then inside.

In the footwell between the driver and passenger seats is another electronic badge that says Hello Future. Apparently this must have been a big selling point when the i3 came out. Oh, it's the future and my card says hello. Next I want to talk about the body panels now every time a new tesla comes out people go up to the body panels with a ruler and see if it lines up perfectly and if it doesn't they say all the control The quality is terrible, you see everything. There are kinds of tweets and internet posts about this, but take a look at the body panels of this car, where the A-pillar meets the hood.

There's a giant space there now. I think it's intentional, but just by looking at them you can feel them. and you can see it has a cheap look and certainly a cheap feel and they don't really line up. I've heard many complaints about Tesla body panels being a millimeter off, and yet I've never heard anyone mention this on the i3. And well, maybe they should have another interesting quirk of the i3 next just to make it especially clear that this is not a typical BMW. This vehicle has some pretty strange trim level names. You know, what normal car do you choose between the lx or the. ex or se and that gives you the features you want in this vehicle the trim levels are called deca world mega world giga world and terra world so you don't just buy an i3 ex or an i3 LX you buy an i3 mega. world, I guess it's supposed to be kilobytes, gigabytes, megabytes, but it's very, very strange.

Next we have to talk about the tires on the i3 and in this view you can clearly see why look at how narrow these tires are. I can take my thumb and my index finger. finger completely around the entire tread of the tire, it's crazy, a normal car has like 225 255 with tires, this thing has 155 wide tires, now presumably that's to help in range, the tires help it go a little further if they are narrower for Whatever the reason, but they are crazy to look at, they really look like bicycle tires and when they are turned like this, you can look in, you can see the inner workings of the suspension and it barely looks like a car For real road use, these have to be the narrowest tires on any car available for sale right now.

Next we have to talk about turn signals. I've always liked the turn signals on the i3. I like how they look. They are flush with this tailgate panel. They are integrated. in this black design and they complement the brake lights and make this car look like it has eyes in the back. I always thought it was a really cool look, but this is my favorite part if you open the tailgate with the turn signals. Look at the bumper down here, look at a second set of turn signals coming on, that's because the US federal government requires that you can't put turn signals on a moving body part, so that the moment you open the tailgate, it becomes a moving part. from the body, the turn signals come on down here so they can be on in a fixed position, close the tailgate again and then the turn signals go back to their normal position.

Now the strange thing is that when you open the tailgate, the turn signals don't turn off on the tailgate so they work in both places and stay on even when the tailgate goes all the way up in the air at this point, it's telling the sky that we're turning now, another element I like here is The brake lights have this U shape underneath the turn signal when you turn them on, they look cool, but maybe the most interesting thing about the brake lights is that they come on even when you're not braking. Like most electric cars, the i3 can be driven primarily with a single pedal.

You drive using the accelerator pedal, you push it as usual, but when you release the accelerator, the car brakes much faster than a normal car, because it is trying to capture the kinetic energy to regenerate part of the electric motor and gives you a little more burden. Now the crazy thing about this is that you can keep driving, you release the accelerator, the car slows down so quickly that it automatically applies the brake lights without you. I'm actually braking, look at this, I'm going to pass and I'm going to let off the accelerator and I'm not going to hit the brakes, look what happens and speaking of the doors, let's be honest, they're basically the strangest thing ever.

The whole side profile of the i3, the front doors are pretty normal, but then the window line makes this weird bend where it goes down about two inches and then you have the rear doors that are only half the size and have no handle, here it is the Explanation of that: you open the front door and then there is a small handle here, you use it to open the rear door, so that the rear doors cannot be opened independently of the front doors. You have to open the front door first and then the back door. There's a tailgate like this on both sides, not just one side like some trucks or like the Hyundai Veloster and once you have it open like this you can just get in the back seats and now I'm back here and I'm hanging out now There's not much room back here, as you can see, I can't even put my foot completely on the floor, although I suppose if I raised the front seat a little it would be fine, anyway.

I could sit here for a while, it wouldn't be terribly comfortable, but it would be fine. The problem with the back seats is more the fact that it's a bit claustrophobic back here, there's obviously not a lot of legroom, but the big problem is that the rear windows don't roll down when you close this, you're just stuck here , you have to wait for the person in front to open the door before you can get out and your windows are locked in place, you can't Actually roll down just the front windows and the i3 rolls down, so if you're in the back back, you're in the back.

Now I am inside the i3 and I have to say that this interior is the most responsible. Have I ever been to Not responsible because it's boring, but responsible because much of it is recycled and sustainable. Listen to some of these things. BMW says the interior door panels are made from kinaf fibers, a member of the cotton family that is particularly sustainable. the dashboard the wooden dashboard this car does not have it, but the cars that do have it only use eucalyptus wood, which is mainly grown in Europe and comes from 100 certified responsible forest management. There is also wool here which is a blend of wool and recycled.

Plastic drink bottles that you don't find in your typical everyday car and all those materials give it a different look. This car has a strange exterior appearance, and all too often, cars that look strange on the outside don't look strange enough on the outside. The interior of this car has the perfect combination of strange exterior styling and unusual interior styling and materials. Another interesting thing about the i3. As I sit here with the doors open, I can clearly see the carbon fiber chassis and body structure of this one. vehicle now I normally don't get into this stuff but this is cool usually only high end exotic cars have carbon fiber in their chassis because it's very very expensive and because it's a lightweight material that most normal cars just They do not need. use, but on this car the theory was that the battery and electric motor components were so heavy that they wanted to neutralize it and use a carbon chassis, so this thing has a carbon chassis like a Porsche Carrera GT, a ferrari and a 918 spyder. and a 50,000 bmw electric hatchback, this is definitely the cheapest car to use such a thing.

Next, it's time to climb into the front seats of the i3, but before you take a look at what happens when you approach this car at night, you press the unlock. The button and interior lights turn blue to remind you that you're approaching your futuristic BMW, but the moment you pull the door handle to get in, they turn white, which is a cool little touch now that I'm inside the i3 and there. Of course, there are a lot of interesting quirks here, which start with simply turning it on, pressing the start/stop button and it makes a slightly strange sound.

Listen to it, I guess, because this card doesn't have an engine sound when you turn it on. BMW wanted some sound to confirm that it was on and that's why they chose the one that is a little strange, the less strange is thegear lever. Now you probably see it there and wonder: what is that thing? And this is the first time I've ever driven an i3 and I've been wondering the same thing and as I've seen it in pictures for the last four years, but it's strangely intuitive, it's mounted on the steering column and you push it up. to activate the transmission.

Just pull. Put it down to reverse, it's pretty easy too: give it half a push and you're in neutral and press a small button on top that engages park. It works quite well despite its unusual appearance. Something that doesn't work so well is the windshield wipers. which is infuriating, you put the wipers on, you move the butt to a certain position high, low, whatever the wipers come on, all good and then the wiper butt goes back to its neutral position, so let's say you put the wipers on on intermittent mode and the windshield is clean exactly how you want it and you think it's off because the lever is in the off position and then they wipe your windshield, you weren't expecting it because you didn't realize the wipers were on intermittently, it's a terrible design when I put the wipers on high I just leave the stock in the high position so I know they are there, why complicate something that doesn't have to be complicated and another strange choice by BMW.

Inside this car, when driving at night, there is a small button below the hazard lights. that shows a picture of a car from above and a small circle around it, like a kind of halo, it's very attractive, the circle is lit green and it's the only button that's so lit that way, and you really want press it, so you press it because you're curious and then it turns off the forward collision warning system. Usually turning off that system is something that's hidden in some menu, but in this car it's like the most obvious and attractive button on the dashboard.

Now, when you step into the i3, your initial inclination is to pull on the little bit that sticks out at the bottom, but it's actually a small storage tray. The handle you're supposed to pull is higher up, but I bet a lot of people do this. mistake, now talking about the storage tray, those storage trays inside the door are actually quite big, you can put a water bottle in there and probably a lot of other things too. It's a great little storage area and complements the glove box, which is also a bit small. Kinda cool to open it, you press a little button under the glove box and then it opens immediately so you have access to your gloves.

Another element that I find interesting inside the interior of the i3 has a center console, like almost all cars, it has controls for the infotainment system, the handbrake and at the front of the center console there is a cup holder. What did BMW do when they finished this center console? Why they added another cup holder which seems like an afterthought now that I've pulled this out as hard as I could but I don't think you can move it. It's like they were designing the center console and they finished it and then they said, "Oh, you know, we probably need another cup holder, so they put it in there now." Next one item worth noting about the i3 is surprisingly low on equipment given its price, this is an expensive car as I have said several times and yet it has manual seats, there is no power function on the seats in this particular. one, this vehicle does not have a sunroof, the tailgate is manual, it is not electric, in fact this i3 does not even have a rear view camera which is now mandatory by the government, but a couple of years ago it did not have one and BMW didn't put it on. it's on them, I guess it's a typical BMW in terms of options, you have to pay more for everything now, despite not having a rear view camera, it has one interesting thing: put it in reverse and a small image of an i3 appears in the center . screen and lets you know if you're about to hit something I like, it's a little more charming than a traditional car graphic and finally it moves on to the infotainment system, this is actually a pretty standard infotainment system from BMW in a language you can choose.

English obviously in a couple of other languages, but you can also choose short and normal so you can listen to short English or normal English. I've been speaking English for quite some time and I've personally never heard of the difference between short and normal. English, but I'm interested in finding out, and those are the interesting features and strange quirks of the strange and quirky BMW i3. Now it's time to take it out on the road and see how well it handles driving the i3. pretty far from me because the windshield is very tilted on this car, I actually like the driving position now it feels a little bit minivan, but uh oh no, there's a car I wish I was driving uh, but other than that, I mean which is actually It's a nice driving position, you're sitting high up and that's what people seem to like, based on the crossover trend now, accelerating from a standstill is fast in terms of acceleration because the torque is zero at zero rpm. it actually ends up being pretty fast even though it's not really that powerful it locks you in and it's funny watching my head move back when i'm fluoridated you can't hear the sound but you actually know it's an electric car and it's pretty Quick to stop at a traffic light, it's completely silent and they've actually done a good job of isolating the car from the outside world.

You don't really hear that much road noise from other vehicles or traffic noise or street noise or anything like that, which is surprising considering this car has some cheap parts that really aren't the nice, luxurious things you'd expect from a car. At this price, I personally think. The materials are great. I've always liked that they like to use weird carbon-neutral recycled materials, whatever, and it actually ends up being kind of cool, there's no leather, it's got some weird padded material for the seat, the dashboard is a different material and everything. As for the rest, I really like how that all fits together, it ends up being crisper than I would expect in the corners, the handling is surprisingly precise the moment you start turning the wheel, the car starts doing exactly what you would do.

Expect the handling itself to be the way the car feels when cornering. It's a bit, it doesn't feel that short, especially since ride and handling can be altered if you go over a bump. If you hit like a mid-corner slam or something, you might feel a little shaky, it certainly doesn't have the kind of stability you expect from a BMW, though, between acceleration and handling. It's better than I think most people expect from electric vehicles. I certainly think it's an improvement over most electric cars. I think the Model 3 actually drives a little better, feels a little faster, certainly has a lower center of gravity. better handling the interior is very roomy im pretty tall 63 i have plenty of head room plenty of leg room the front passenger would also drive this car before trying to take the back seat so i dont know how they are big but i will say that sitting in front, the interior is quite spacious.

In the end, I think the driving experience is fine. I think the driving is a little difficult and could be improved a little, but I think overall. it's fast enough it handles reasonably well okay I think the main draw of this car is going to be its styling and how weird it looks and how cool and weird the interior is if you think it's cool and I do I mean I think it's futuristic. and great, I just don't think 50 grand can really justify why I would spend 50,000 on a car that I could only drive 97 miles and still have to put gas in when I could theoretically spend 40 grand and get the model 3 and it has a much better autonomy or several other vehicles.

This car had a decent value proposition when it first came out three or four years ago, but now it's totally overmatched and I think it's probably very difficult to sell in BMW dealerships and shouldn't be. Buy one of these right now unless you can get a big discount from the BMW dealers because they know they are selling against much better competition in a rapidly improving segment and that is the BMW i3, say what you want but this car At least it's cool. In my opinion, I like the way it looks, I like that it's weird and futuristic, I like all its quirks, and frankly, I like the way it drives.

The only thing I don't like about this car is the price, especially considering the range, but considering how easy it is to find one of these used for under twenty grand. This might be the worst value new car and also one of the coolest cheap used cars. Now it's time to give Doug a rating starting with the categories and style of the weekend. The i3 is controversial. I like it, but I know many feel exactly the opposite. I give it a 6 out of 10. Acceleration is in the high 6 second range, 0-60, and it gets a 2 out of 10.

Handling is fine, acceptable. It's not fast or especially sharp, but it gets a 4 out of 10. The fun factor isn't too low, as it's exciting to drive and there are some new additions to the interior and appearance, but it's still not a sports car and it gets a 4 out of 10. The cool factor is still reasonably high as the i3 is still turning heads, but it is becoming quite common and cheap and gets a 5 out of 10. Add it up and the weekend score is 21 out of 50. No It's a great weekend car. For the everyday category, starting with the features, the i3 is interesting, it has some good things, like some modern safety technologies, but it is missing some obvious things, like power seats and a rearview camera, it gets only a five out of ten.

Comfort is fine and gets a six. out of ten the quality is good, I like the interior materials, but long-term reliability remains to be seen and it gets a six out of ten practicality is good, its 36+ cubic feet of cargo space should give it a 7 out of 10 , but I'm knocking it down one notch due to its low range, making it mostly a round city car, which is why it gets a 6 out of 10. Finally, there's the Valium, this is the low point as a new car, the i3 is a truly terrible value and scores only a 2 out of 10, bringing the total daily score to just 25 out of 50.

Add it up and Doug's score is 46 out of 100, compare it to the model 3 and the chevy Bolt and you will see that the i3 just isn't. anywhere near the shining star of this segment, you would only get one of these if you were buying used or getting a big discount on a new lease or buying it.