Why I’m Still Completely Obsessed With My BMW i3

You’d think the honeymoon phase of car ownership would wear away after a while. That after a year or so, what had been framed in my mind as a larger-than-life “Carbon Fiber Wonder from Leipzig” would fall to earth and become simply my little commuter car. But no, this hasn’t happened at all. Every time I sit in my BMW i3 and go for a drive — even just a mundane commute — I think to myself, “Wow this is a great car.” Here’s why.

I’ve been wrenching hard on my WWII Jeep this past week, and before that, I was road-tripping my 1992 Jeep Comanche from LA to Portland and back. You’d think I’d be in Jeep-mode right now, and while I’m pretty much always in Jeep mode, for about an hour each day, I’m not. I’m in BMW i3 mode.

My commute should be miserable. I’m stuck in LA traffic far too often, the drivers here have road rage like you wouldn’t believe, parking is horrible, the heat is unbearable, fuel is expensive, the roads aren’t particularly scenic or well-maintained — pretty much everything about driving here should be awful. But it isn’t, because the tool I have for the job performs its task truly flawlessly.

I say this a couple of days after I had to drop my friend Brandon off at the airport (LAX). “Oh crap, I forgot to charge my car,” I told him. “Not a worry,” I continued. “I have a gas generator in the back.” Brandon then told me about the time he forgot to charge a Jeep Wagoneer S; that was a pain in the ass.

After almost three years piloting BMW i3s (a 2014 then a 2021), I’ve come to realize that EREV technology is basically the perfect solution. So many folks call it a compromise — a pointless, heavy, expensive compromise that adds complexity to a vehicle that would otherwise be rather simple. But actually, a gasoline range extender is a compromise reducer. I drive the i3 however I want; I don’t have to change my behavior at all. I plug in most days, and drive 150 miles all-electric. This suits 99 percent of my driving needs. In the edge-case scenario where I need more range, instead of carrying around a $7,000 pound battery that weighs half a ton, I carry around a little 400-pound gas generator whose oil I change annually.

The refrain I hear all too often that the average person only needs 100 miles of electric range is silly. People have been purchasing vehicles for edge-case scenarios since the beginning of the automotive timeline. Whether that edge case is your kid’s friends needing a ride home from soccer practice (so you buy a three-row), or that annual camping trip you take (so you buy a 4×4), or that canyon road you like to hit every couple of years (so you buy a sports car), or that occasional refrigerator you have to carry (so you buy a truck), this is just how people buy cars. Ignoring the edge case is ignoring human nature, and automakers do so at their own peril. The truth is that people buy cars for what they’re capable of, even if those people rarely do whatever that is; people want 300+ miles of range, and to give that to them with a technology that costs less, weighs less, and helps eliminate infrastructure worries — it’s just awesome. And I say that as someone who doesn’t have a horse in the race: EREVs are incredible.

But it’s not just the range extender technology that I love about the i3; it’s everything about the car. The interior remains a simply fantastic place to spend time, with a gorgeous eucalyptus dashboard, olive leaf-died leather seats with wool inserts, “kenaf” fibers making up the door-cards and dash, and huge windows that let in lots of light:

The carbon fiber chassis is just cool, and so are the plastic body panels. I park this thing wherever I want, and I don’t ever worry about someone opening their car door and dinging mine. I have XPEL PPF protecting the paint, and the plastic panels won’t ding.

What’s more, the car’s size and hilariously small turning circle make it an amazing city car. I can park it anywhere, I can do highly-illegal U-turns (known here in LA as “flipping a bitch”) without anyone noticing, and with the torquey electric motor, I can easily merge onto freeways as scary as the 110 and change lanes on the 405 even when there’s just a tiny gap in traffic.

The coach doors can be a challenge in parking lots, as you have to open the front door to open the rear door, and in tight spots, this traps you in a tiny space between the doors and the i3, but that’s a small compromise for such a small and practical footprint. There’s tons of room in the i3; even a child seat fits in it easily:

I bought my first BMW i3 back in early 2023, and after about a year and a half, I made a terrible financial decision and dropped $30,000 on what I consider the Holy Grail of i3s — a final model-year Galvanic Gold BMW i3S Rex with Giga World interior and Harman Kardon sound system. I thought I would regret this purchase, but in fact, I do not even one bit.

Not only is the car phenomenal at fulfilling its intended purpose, but I regularly receive inquiries from people asking if I could help them find a BMW i3 just like mine, because the inventory has simply dried up. BMW i3s are rare, and the ones you really want — 2019 and up models with the range extender and one of the two leather interiors — are basically impossible to find. I managed to snag mine just as the very last models were coming off lease, and my goodness, am I happy I did; the well is now dry.

Anyway, it has been far too long since I extolled the virtues of what I consider the greatest city car of all time, and with BMW’s new boss being one of the brains behind the i3, I figured I’d use that news peg to write an update. I still love my BMW i3. In fact, I think I love it more than ever.

All Photos: David Tracy