Quote:
Originally Posted by afadeev
That's exactly right - with a lease, you only commit ($ monthly payment) * (# of months on the lease).
In my case, I may be leasing a $50K i3-BEV, but my exposure is only $250 * 24 == $6K over 2 years.
That's Honda Civic money.
Net of gas savings, it's a ~$100/month car.
For a vehicle MSRP-ed at $50K, that's an absolutely a steal.
In fact, i3 would be an absolutely perfect car for parents to get for their teenagers. Pretty safe, not too fast, always on an EV range leash ;-)
My kids are not old enough to drive, but BMW is missing a serious marketing segmentation opportunity here!
I remember discussing this a year or two ago, and nothing has come of it.
I suspect there are serious packaging constraints preventing this (battery tray is sealed, and ends before the rear axle), else, BMW is usually pretty ingenious with its packaging solutions.
Agreed.
Effectively, that means selling i3s to people living near major cities.
I picked word "near" on purpose, because you can't reliably recharge an EV in NYC (way too few public EV chargers), so owning one while you live in the City is impractical (never mind the costs of parking and insuring a car in NYC, period).
i3 really requires a garage with an L2 charger that it can hog exclusively. Any time.
Sounds good, but financials would not support an i3M car.
///M brand sales represent somewhere between 5-10% of equivalent regular model sales.
So if there were 6K i3s sold in the US last year, at most, i3M would have sold ~600 of them.
That's would have been less than 1/2 of i8 sales last year.
You see where it becomes a super-niche product that can't justify proper new sub-model R&D investment. And ///M quality upgrades would require serious redesign with extra cooling (Model S overheats and craps out on track), better aerodynamics, interior upgrades, etc, etc.
An i3"S" upgrade, with stiffer suspension + wider tires + maybe stronger engine, is way cheaper to put together. Priced reasonably, people will buy it. I would.
So I bet an "S" will happen.
4WD i3M would have been cool, but is highly unlikely to happen.
Not unless i3 sales suddenly go exponential and hit 10x in a few years between now and 2021, when i5 SUV is due to arrive.
Bolt and Model 3 will make sure that that (sadly) will not come to pass.
In a way, i8 is, and will remain, an i3///M-car ;-)
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I was thinking that they would make a second battery tray, fitted where the REX is now. Keep it the same weight as the REX, but all battery, >120 Ah cells.
Bailyhill