History is littered with cars that supposedly arrived before their time, commercial failures not because they didn’t excite people but because they were ahead of the curve, often too clever or simply too expensive to be appreciated. The BMW i3 is anther to add to that list.
Recent decades have provided ample examples for apologists to consider, many having put environmental considerations at their heart long before enough people cared about such things.
Examples include the Audi A2 (176,000 sales over six years), notable for its use of lightweight aluminium to maximise efficiency if not build and repair costs; the original Mercedes-Benz A-Class (1.1m sold over eight years but reportedly each at a loss of more than £700), with its under utilised and overly complex sandwich platform, which was in part there for potential battery or fuel cell storage but made it sit upright like a deeply unfashionable MPV; and the Chevrolet Volt/Vauxhall Ampera (177,000 sold over nine years), which featured a range-extender EV powertrain before such technology got even a hint of mainstream acceptance.
Now, with the news that it will leave showrooms this summer, it’s the turn of the BMW i3 to be lamented by people who didn’t buy it. It was never short of ambition, with its carbon-composite body and low-emissions manufacturing goals, but it was always low on sales, having notched up around 250,000 registrations across its nine-year lifespan, despite remaining well regarded as a result of continual updates.
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Worse still, at launch it was meant, alongside the plug-in hybrid BMW i8, to be a precursor to a whole new sub-range of i vehicles that never came to be because of paltry sales. Anyone who walked through a major airport at around this time will recall the enormous (and effective) marketing campaign that heralded i as a new dawn. Alas, it was a neat idea that very few car buyers actually bought into.
Attempting to run ahead of the curve can be an expensive exercise, from the billions invested in engineering and developing such cars through to trying to sell them, as well as the reputational damage from having to drop them.
Ironically, previous BMW boss Harald Krüger was rumoured to have left the company in 2020 in part because BMW was perceived by investors to have slipped behind in the race to electrification.
What rational leader would have doubled down on launching more i models given the evidence of the sales figures in front of him?
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Is there some of this article missing?
I started to read it, than just when I thought it would say something interesting it just fizzled
out ....
Actually, sales of the i3 increased in 2021. Why didn't you mention that Jim? This article plays to the laggards and the luddites in the automotive sphere, the ones who have held back progress and resisted positive change because of misguided attachment to incumbent habits. If BMW had kept on the path started by the i3 and the i8, instead of getting cold feet, they could now be rivalling Tesla, instead of playing catch-up. The entire mind-set of this article is wrong and exposes the underlying problem with Autocar - it's dominated Editorially by conventional and conservative thinking, not genuine enthusiasm for engineering and technology, with which the i3 and i8 abound.
It wasnt very desirable.
Small, funny looking, lumpy ride, skinny tyres, so-so range and extortionate to repair. It was certainly ahead of its time - a premature birth.
Back then why would you buy one over a Leaf or Zoe or Tesla?