Here’s How The BMW i3 Performs As A Family Car

My wife just took a step out of the house for a couple of hours, leaving me with my one-year-old, who is undoubtedly going to try to hit my keyboard. In fact, right now he’s pullin3445diod – sorry, that was him. He hates when I’m on my laptop, which I understand. He also seems to think the keyboard is a toy, which makes sense, as it does make some satisfying clicks. Anyway, let’s see if I can jam out a quick blog about my BMW i3, a small city car, and whether or not it makes as a decent child-hauler.

First things first: As a hauler of grown-children, the i3 is excellent. Recently my neighbor wanted to test drive my 2021 i3S to see if it might be a car he’d buy for himself since a tree crushed his Honda, and after a few spins around the block, the six-foot-five gentleman was sold. The i3’s unique shape is really only possible due to it being an EV with a lightweight carbon fiber body; the lack of weight up high and the presence of a heavy battery down low means the car can be super tall and narrow — perfect for bean-pole-like folks, but still an excellent city runabout.

As a single guy, I found the i3 to be perfect as an LA daily-driver. Now that I have a kid, I can’t say it’s quite perfect, but it’s manageable. Here’s what I mean.

Either Front-Seat Legroom Or Easy Child Access — Not Both

The BMW i3’s rear seat is far more spacious than people think, and getting in and out is really not a big deal once you get the door open (more on that in a bit). Check it out:

Legroom is fine for someone my height (5’8″), but as I found out recently: It’s not quite enough to handle a 360-degree spinning seat.

Personally, I didn’t really want a spinning baby seat, because they’re so dang huge, but trying to get my baby in and out of the rear-facing Clek seat we had was an absolute nightmare. I basically had shove him head first into the small slot between the seat and the C-pillar, then turn him and drop him into the seat, whose latches I had to fasten by leaning far in so I could see. As you may imagine, he hated every bit of that.

So I tried to find the smallest spinning car-seat I could, and I wound up with this British seat called the Joie Chili Spin 360. At $250 brand new, it was a white-hot deal. The downside is that, though many wrote online that the Chili was small compared to other “360” car seats (and one BMW i3 owner even posted pictures of it in place), the seat just isn’t that small, and requires me to move the passenger’s seat all the way forward.

This isn’t ideal for long-distance travel, especially since my wife is one of those people who likes to bring her baggage with her in the footwell (I personally hate this, but it seems to be a common thing), but for anything under about an hour, it’s totally fine for folks about 5’8″ and under.

Once we can turn the seat around and it becomes front facing (see below)? This i3 will be perfect.

Even now, since my family is only three people, my wife can just sit behind me, next to Delmar in the back, and we can all comfortably drive around spending roughly 8 cents per mile instead of the 30 cents/mile her Lexus RX gets in the current ridiculous gas price situation we’re in. The downside is that my wife thinks Delmar is fussier when she’s sitting next to him; also, she can’t open her door without me undoing my seatbelt and opening my door first.

Again, it’s not perfect, but once Delmar is front-facing, all will be well.

The Doors Are Tricky, But Worth It

One thing that frustrates me about many car reviews is complaints about a feature without describing the engineering compromises behind it. For example, when the Jeep Cherokee XJ and ZJ debuted, everyone complained about the spare tire in the cargo area. “This takes up cargo space,” they lamented without noting that putting the spare in the cargo area allowed for an excellent departure angle, as well as ease of use when you need that spare. Fast forward to 1999 and Jeep took those complaints too seriously, dropping the spare below the cargo floor, which pushed the gas tank way down low, harming off-road capability and aesthetics of that rear end. Few people complain about the cargo-area spare since it means the Jeep looks better and is better off-road.

The i3 has received similar critique. It’s got a really nicely thought-out carbon fiber body that’s small enough to yield an amazing city car, but big enough to seat four people. I’m fairly sure that, in order for the i3 to be as short as it is, but to also fit the drive unit/range extender, and to accommodate four passengers, four doors, and a decently sized cargo area, its carbon fiber structure had to have one large side aperture. This necessitated suicide doors, which, yes, aren’t exactly the most practical types of doors in the city. Would I rather have them than four doors and 6″ of extra length? Absolutely. The i3’s exterior size/interior space ratio is key to what makes it so excellent.

Anyway, the issue with the suicide doors is that, when you park next to someone and you’re trying to take your baby out of the rear door, you have to do a bit of a dance. You open the front door to open the rear door, then you close the front door (it won’t latch unless the rear doors is closed, so it’ll just sorta sit there), then you take your child out of the rear seat, carry them next to the closed-ish front door, then close the rear door, which you can’t quite do without slightly opening the front door. So you open the front door enough to let the rear door close but not enough to shove you and your baby into the neighboring car, then you can close the front door.

It’s not ideal.

One option is to have your partner take the child out of the car before parking, though if there’s someone behind you, that won’t work. I find myself heavily favoring the size that the child isn’t on so I have a bit of extra space, and given the i3 isn’t particularly wide (70.5″ without mirrors — so 4″ narrower than my wife’s 2017 Lexus RX350), this generally works out OK.

Cargo Space Is Honestly Fine

The cargo area in the i3 isn’t terrible. The floor is a bit high, since there’s a drive unit underneath, but you can easily fit a travel stroller like this YoYo:

Can you fit a full-size stroller? Lemme see here:

It fits, just.

There’s also a frunk, which fits a small carryon-bag worth of stuff, though it’s not sealed from the elements so everything I want to stay clean to go into a bag:

Accessing the frunk is a bit annoying since it’s not on the key fob and has a secondary latch, but for stuff you don’t use often, it’s not terrible.

The Interior Is Vulnerable To Baby-Chaos

One of the biggest concerns I have is the interior, which, to me, is one of the i3’s greatest attributes. It’s made up of a blend of olive leaf-died leather, wool, kenaf (a plant also called “Hibiscus cannabinus”), and Eucalyptus.

Nevermind that I have to die my Eucalptus regularly to keep it from fading/cracking. I’m more worried about the back bench. The wool stains incredibly easily — even water will stain it. I’m also concerned about the white armrests back there getting marked up with some kind of marker or whatever it is my child is playing with back there.

Probably my biggest concern is the seatback, which is made up of a thin piece of cloth stretched taught in the center of the seat. One swift kick, and that cloth is tearing; I know this because the cloth was torn on my old 2014 BMW i3.

My plan is to install a seatback protector like this:

And for the seats, there’s a person in Hong Kong who makes special cover that mimic the factory seats. Check these out:

These covers are quite expensive, though. So I’m not sure if I’ll spring for them. Either way, the seats will need some kind of cover.

The i3 — A Perfect City Car, An Imperfect Kid Car

Driving Delmar around in the i3 is awesome, and because mine is the “S” model with rather stiff springs, a few spins around the block usually has him snoozing (for some reasons bumps help kids fall asleep; my wife’s cushy Lexus is a nightmare in this area).

With my wife in tow for short trips, the passenger’s seat is fine. And for longer trips, she sits in the back and hopes Delmar doesn’t get too fussy back there, and she deals with having to wait for me to open my door before she can get out. At 8 cents per mile, and with that lovely interior and small exterior dimensions that make for easy parking, it’s worth the compromises, especially once Delmar’s seat can face forward and my wife can sit up front. We’ll have to make do with the compact stroller, but we use that anyway, regardless of the car we drive.

So overall, I’d say the i3 is a solid B family car if you have one rear-facing child. If there are two, the grade drops to probably an F. One rear facing and one front facing? C. Two front facing? Again, back to a B. Maybe a B minus since you need more stuff for two kids and the i3 is a bit small.

Could be worse, is what I’m saying.

(Luckily my wife came home shortly after I started this article, hence the lack of gibberish from Delmar slamming my keyboard).