A Muscle Car Guy Drives a BMW i3 For A Day

In this video, I drive (and give my perspective on) the BMW i3, as a muscle car guy.
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[@bluzbrother]

Nice review, I own one, and I can appreciate the perspective. It’s definitely great for some things...and makes no sense for others. Buying one used at $16k with only 14k miles made sense. The styling is not for everyone either. It’s super easy to park though, and pretty fun to drive.

[@TajCars]

Tim Snyder thanks for getting what I was going for in his video. I think it totally makes sense in the right scenario.

[@ethans-d3752]

I am a 16 year old and own an i3, I completely respect your perspective but would live to say a few things, first off, I never have really had an issue with range, I drive about 30-60 miles a day, sometimes 75, and have never really dealt with any range anxiety. At the end of the day, you can just plug it in to any wall socket to get a few miles of charge to get you home. I also have lots of fun with the speed as well and although it is less efficient, it does not greatly effect the battery life. The battery life is just a prediction with the way you are driving and what all you are using (seat warmers, AC, winsheild wipers, etc.) so after all it just went down because you accelerated after driving so efficiently before that. Enjoyed the video!

[@billetdesigns6448]

Hey there brother... Thanks for your perspective on the i3, but just for your readers knowledge I would like to expand or clarify a few things you commented on. I'm assuming that your friend purchased the non-REX version (the on board gas generator). The BMW i3 REX allows you to drive continuously with electric plus gas for about 150 miles. There is virtually no range anxiety unless you forget to put gas in the middle of desert. The other obvious mention was the braking... brother!!! It's "single pedal" driving with a foot brake next to the accelerator pedal if you need it. You feather the pedal to control the rate of deceleration. As a caveat, the vehicle is very much capable of driving on a 1,000 mile road trip (only in a REX version). For clarification, the car is classified as "city car" and is absolutely perfect for that use. Just my perspective as an i3 owner and for anyone looking to purchase one. Personally, I love it and would totally recommend it to the right type of driver... It's not for everyone. I use mine as a utility car.

[@gjkMN]

About the Prius: no, those drivers aren't the way they are because of the car they purchased; they purchased a Prius and drive it in their way because of the way they are.

[@craigmatthews4102]

Next time you drive it try to let your foot off the pedal slightly and it will coast

[@TajCars]

will do!

[@phenex551]

Yes, the i3 is coasting when the energy gauge is in the center position.

[@andrewhorvath]

Very nice review!

[@CordlessReview]

It's a great car. But it is just too expensive when buying new in a world where you can purchase a Tesla model 3 for about the same price. I purchased my 2015 BMW i3 Rex Edition 3 weeks ago for 18k CPO from BMW. Now that is much better then the new price. I love everything about this car but the new car price tag. The last time I put fuel in it was 3 weeks ago when I drove it home from Atlanta to North Carolina. I come home and plug it in and it is ready every day for me. The cost for charging for me is around $15 to $20 additional each month on my electric bill. If I come home with 0% battery every day it would cost me about $2.00 a day to charge it which is still less then gas I was paying. But I don't come home empty I usually come home around 50% to 75% each day.

[@gluuuuue]

Hmm... have you ever driven a Prius before? I drive a Prius (Plug-In), here in the Bay Area. I've talked to enough others in the Prius community. The primary wonderful thing about Priuses is the ability to go 450 to 500+ miles on a single tank of gas. And that was just a wonderful and liberating selling point to me. Either you fill up half as frequently as you do with a typical other car (even other hybrids, like SUVs made into hybrids just to tout being able to get the mileage of a normal mid-sedan), or you can drive around a lot more, a lot further. And each time, you're only filling up 7-9 gallons and paying under $30. There were times I filled up completely for under $20 and I suddenly had flashbacks to the last time a fill-up cost that little when I was a kid. I previously used to drive a used Camry (hated other Camry drivers--it's not the car, it's completely the driver) and a Sienna minivan, an suv before that. And I had to fill up every ~220mi at $40 each time for the Camry or as low as 190mi on the minivan and suv at $60 - $70/tank ($80 several times). With a Prius, you never have any anxiety about how much you can drive if you need/want to. My younger brother also drives a Prius, a normal hybrid model from the same year as mine. We normally fill up when get down to anywhere from 50-90 miles of range left, or about 1/10th of a tank left. But even with just a gallon of gas left, I could still drive from SF to South Bay if I needed to. Now there's definitely an obsession some Prius owners/drivers have with trying to maximize their mpg, and the fascination with hypermiling to push getting every mile out of every drop of gas and kwh of power. This involves a lot of what's called pulse & glide driving. Because the Prius automatically applies the brakes slightly when completely letting off the accelerator, you have to apply light pressure to effectively accelerate & coast in a normal car. But nothing actually prevents drivers of non-Priuses from driving the same way and also noticeably boosting their mpg out of their non-Prius cars too. Your acceleration pattern and pacing would just get disruptive relative to the way the average driver drives their car. Hypermilers will not only drive like this, but do things like maximize for the most LRR tires, minimize heater/ac use, only charge when it's warmer, keep enginer heaters on their car so the ICE can be in peak temperature efficiency with minimal warm-up time. I just drive my Prius like a normal car. Trying to push the maximum gas mileage was an interesting hobby at first but quickly got old, felt very slow and time-consuming and a good portion of it just seemed to come from a specific driving style more than driving the Prius itself. (Otoh, I've heard reports some hypermilers have gotten up to to almost 900mi/tank in a Prius..) But one of the reasons Prius drivers, myself included, do much prefer to drive in all-electric mode is because when gas mode can be very slow and sluggish when the car is starting cold. With as full a charge as possible on my battery (about 8 miles now), I can start at 5:30am when the car's been cold all night and get going at maximum acceleration, smooth and silk, as presumably the i3 was. And it can accelerate really nicely. It's just that it doesn't last very long, even the Plug-in Prius and Prius Prime with their larger batteries, as harder acceleration gets as inefficient as a normal car. It takes a while for the ICE to warm up from cold, a little moreso I've felt than with regular gas vehicles. (This is supposed to be the benefit of the engine block warmer.) And when the ICE is that cold, it reminds you the ICE only has 97hp and it's got to warm itself up first.) The EV mode is terrific. It just doesn't last long enough at all. It's like an extremely limited amount of magic juice for your car, except you can't even really save it because even if you start with the HV battery fully charged and switch to hybrid mode, it always starts drawing something from the HV battery. But if you drive a short enough distance, with the Plug-in or the Prime, you can conceivably drive entirely in electric mode without ever touching your gas. For commuting that's amazing. Wake up. Go to work with a full tank of gas. Get there. Still have a full tank of gas. Charge your car in your employer parking lot. Leave work with a full tank. Get home with a full tank. You could do this all week. And if you needed to at any point, you can still drive 500 miles. I mean, tell me about another car that lets you do that.. :)

[@mamadouaziza2536]

All i3' that use 3G wifi service will cease to have navigation, connect drive services, no more app services, no more satellite radio, no more voice control, no bluetooth, no SOS, no more updates after February 2022.. These cars will be useless and can not be updated to 4G. BMW is blaming cellular services. BMW will not update these i3' to 4G.

[@simonreeves2017]

There is no gas - it's an electric car man! The accelerator peddle allows you to instruct the electronics on how to send a multi-phase AC signal to the induction motor, this signal balances using battery power to move forward, with regeneration to slow the car and charge the battery. It's a totally different concept to a gas or diesel vehicle.