I wrote up a pretty long comment list on the i3 after we had it. I found it on my phone. This was written in 2016 on a maybe 2014 i3.
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Let me start by saying this is a completely subjective assessment. I don’t follow the car industry or trends. I know what I like and that’s about it.
Running gear:
The turning radius is just awesome. This is important to me; in town I’d rather U-turn than K-turn. This is one of very few cars that can U-turn out of (or into) a parking space.
The suspension is pretty good. Front to rear balance seems to be set well for lower speeds, yet I never felt any imbalance at higher speeds. Comfortable but without much body roll for a tall car.
The steering was disappointing - it felt stiff and lacked feedback. To me it is too powerful; a car this size with such narrow tires shouldn’t need much help. Being used to more direct steering, I tend to drive with a very light touch so the i3 wandered a bit.
Brakes seem fine (no surprise) but of course they are rarely needed; the regeneration is so good.
I like the big wheels. They roll nicely over rougher surfaces.
Running gear overall: Very nice, but I’d expect no less from BMW. They could have another look at the steering, though.
Body configuration:
I’m personally not a fan of the super-long windshield. I’ve experienced that in a Prius and I think I’m just used to seeing a hood that demarks the end of the car. Not a design deficiency; just not my preference.
The A-pillars are very thick. This may be due to the air bags but I think there are cars with A-pillar airbags without such thick pillars. They did frequently block the view in gentle curves.
Small nit: on the front doors, the inside opening handle isn’t directly next to the grab handle. You open the door with one handle and then have to find the grab handle in an unintuitive place.
Rear windows not going down; that’s a shame. We don’t roll ours down very much but from time to time it’s nice especially in town. Vivien asks for this.
And I am one of those few people who like and use sunroofs; I hear that they are making a comeback in 2016.
A rear-facing child seat is usable with relatively great difficulty. I think we would simply abandon the idea of rear-facing with this car but it is basically required up to a certain age. The rear-seat legroom is barely enough for a kid in a car seat (although paradoxically it is enough for an adult due to the more complete knee bending).
Nearly-flat floor is very nice!
Body overall: no show-stoppers but the fat A-pillar is a bit annoying.
Interior:
The seat heaters are fantastic. They heat up quickly and then 1/3 power is enough.
While I’m sure the wood trim would be pleasant to look at, we didn’t object to anything in the base trim.
Minor nit: The location and action of the start/stop button and the forward/reverse paddle never felt quite right. Totally not a big deal but I’d expect to see this change at the facelift. Some of it might be that the paddle functions too much like a traditional PRNDL control where I would normally pull back to go forward and push forward for reverse. I’d get used to it pretty quickly.
Rear storage as not as bad as it seemed at first. Our jogging stroller fit in there folded normally, and fit with a high chair if the wheels were taken off. There wasn’t room for anything else at that point, but that’s OK.
Interior overall: nice with some quirks. I’d probably learn to deal with iDrive although I am really hoping for a simpler system in my next car.
The drivetrain was as good as I expected (I’d already driven a Model S for an hour or so, and had a pretty good idea what the Range Extender would be like). Smooth, quiet, just wonderful. Fully charged I never saw even 70 miles predicted, though. But while I have a hard time believing that it’s the fastest BMW zero-to-forty, it’s certainly quick enough. I like the drivetrain but on this car the range is a bit less than advertised. Could be because of the colder weather, and the fact that the REX version uses resistance heating rather than a heat pump.
I’m very glad that the enthusiast base has figured out how to reprogram some aspects of the car’s behavior. Door locking and unlocking, alarm chirping on both arming and disarming, the spaceship sound when the car powers up… these are just a few examples of things that should be easily customized by the owner. A far as I know, alarm chirps are illegal in Germany so I don’t see why we have to endure them. For locking, my preference is that if I lock the car it should be locked, and otherwise it should not be. Fortunately I can (at least for now) change these aspects.
I know iDrive has spawned plenty of discussion and that BMW is deeply committed to it. Still, I think there is a lot of room for improvement there; the graphic decorations add nothing to the functionality except distraction and they could be replaced with some elements that indicate where you are in the control menu tree. Nothing I couldn’t get used to, but when I see moving graphics I expect them to indicate something meaningful, but these don’t.
The i3 linked with my phone easily enough, but every time I sat down I needed to go through several menu items before I could get to the music playlists on my phone. It’s easier to just select the music on the phone itself, which pretty well makes the point that the in-dash stuff isn’t adding anything useful. I didn’t use the navigation, but proprietary systems like this tend to get outdated. My in-laws experienced this on a recent BMW where even after an expensive update the maps were still wrong and the navigation was bad. Smartphone-based maps and music are here in the form of CarPlay and Android Auto; it’s a much more maintainable approach.
