Hello all,
Haven't been on this site since we bought the car and needed advice. Have now had our 2017 i3 for nearly 3 years (ex-demo) and 50 000kms.
Generally we love driving it for all the EV reasons, especially my wife as it covers up the things that irritate her about ICE/manual cars. Personally we love the looks and here in South Africa it is generally met with much admiration......Been getting 3.9 miles per kW average so quite happy with that. We charge mainly from solar so running costs are negligible and we notice the savings in diesel costs.
Even take it to Cape Town (550kms) regularly as there are now fast chargers all the way. The difference in range between cold, windy and fast and warm, still and slower is about 35%!! That can reduce the range to under 130km which is a bit of a bummer.
It has been reliable with only a few things addressed during services - steering wheel airbag; sticky fuel cover; and some minor recalls.
There are three major dislikes (and they will make me change to another EV when they become available here):-
1) Road noise on rough tar. So loud and miserable that it makes chatting or listening to music difficult. No alternatives in tyres to address this.
2) The clam shell/suicide rear doors which are just a constant irritation every time we have to use them for passengers or loading. Why oh why, BMW, when this is an urban car?
3) The steering is very poor which makes the handling when driving fast unpredictable. How BMW got this so badly wrong I have no idea.
The steering has been checked by BMW (alignment/tracking as well) and declared correct and to spec. It is sticky around the centre which removes the ability to smoothly steer around the straight ahead position. It also suffers from bump-steer so sweeping corners with any undulations have the car moving all over the road. It also results in the car running wide or, conversely, ducking into corners. Even in a straight line at speed the car can feel so 'nervous' that passing vehicles, especially trucks, is far more nerve shredding than it should be.
Driving in the wet is less secure than it could be due to the steering inadequacies.
Some people blame the narrow tyres but this is a poor reason.
