The BMW i3 Is Having A Moment Right Now, And It’s Not Just Me

I know, I can’t stop talking about the BMW i3, and that may confuse you a bit. Why won’t this guy just shut up about this little city car? Well, it’s because ever since I first drove an i3 a year and a half ago, I’ve known one thing for sure: This car is special. I’ve driven hundreds of cars in my life, and something about the i3 stands out among all of them. And now there’s a little validation that I haven’t gone completely crazy: The world is starting to show appreciation for the Carbon Fiber Wonder from Leipzig.

To be clear, the prices are still going nowhere but down, and that’s not surprising since it’s very much a niche car for a niche buyer.

But I’m not talking about values when I say the world is starting to appreciate the i3: I’m talking about this:

What you’re looking at in the top photo and the image above is a new exhibit in the Petersen Automotive Museum titled “Alternating Currents: The Fall And Rise of Electric Vehicles.” Not only does the exhibit show a completely stripped-down BMW i3 chassis, but the whole exhibit is, in a way, a celebration of the i3. And that’s crazy when you think about it: Can you think of any other 10 year-old car that you can buy for $11,000 that would be shown so prominently in a huge museum exhibit?

You see, the exhibit not only showcases the i3, but also its predecessors and siblings. Here’s the i3’s spiritual predecessor, the E2:

Here’s the Mini E, which came after the E2 but before the i3; it was actually just a conversion done by the newly-minted “i team” at BMW tasked with EV innovation:

Then there’s the BMW Vision Efficient Dynamics, which would go on to become the BMW i8, the i3’s sibling:

You can see details of BMW’s electric lineage in this extremely well-done video by The Petersen:

That video is hosted by head of BMW Group Classic Thomas Plucinsky, who does a fantastic job presenting his company’s electric history in a very non-PR-ish way.

He begins by introducing the BMW 1602 all-electric coupe; it was basically a 2002 converted to electric with a front motor and front-mounted lead-acid batteries; it was showcased at the 1972 olympics:

Next, Plucinsky mentions the BMW E2 design mule and its running prototype predecessor, the E1. The E2, BMW mentions, was actually designed here in California and first shown at the 1991 LA Auto Show:

Here’s a look at an engineering drawing of the E1 running prototype:

Then the video mentions the beginning of BMW’s “i Division,” named after “innovation.” Per the Plucinsky, the it all began in 2009 when BMW put together a team to really crank up EV development. The first vehicle that came out of that group was the Mini E:

If you don’t recall having seen one of these first-gen Mini Coopers in EV form, it’s because BMW worked with AC Propulsion to convert just 500 cars to electric power. The vehicles were leased to customers to figure out how drivers use their EVs. “All this data we wanted back to feed into the next program,” Plucinsky mentions.

Incidentally, my college capstone project, a totaled VW Jetta converted into a rear-wheel drive convertible EV, utilized both power electronics from a decommissioned Mini E as well as the 35 kWh battery pack from that car (you can see the pack behind the front seats in the Mini above). Below are some images of my college capstone project:

Here’s a quote from my thesis:

To power the car, we went with lithium‐ion battery packs. The pack that we ended up receiving is a partially used pack from a Mini E. More specifically, the battery modules are EV Grid 53P2S, which contain Panasonic 18650 batteries. Each battery module is wired in series.
Therefore to reach the correct operating voltage of the motor there must be very close to the optimal number of modules. Each of the EV Grid battery packs is 7.2V. The desired motor voltage is 360V, thus the goal was to fit 50 modules into the car, but we ended up only being able to package 48.

Anyway, the next-generation of the BMW “i” division was the BMW ActiveE, which was basically just an electrified BMW 1 Series:

The ActiveE was important because it was the testbed for the technology later used in the BMW Vision Efficient Dynamics and the BMW i3 production car, of which BMW made a quarter million between 2013 and 2022.

Here’s a look at the i3 at the Petersen:

The truth is that there are lots of other amazing early electric cars at the exhibit beyond BMWs; here’s a description from The Petersen:

Electricity has been used to power automobiles since the 1830s, when Scottish inventor Robert Anderson built a rudimentary electric carriage. At the turn of the 20th century, it was the most popular means of motor vehicle propulsion; it was clean, quiet, reliable, and especially well-liked by wealthy women who appreciated—and could afford—the autonomy that electric cars offered. However, electric vehicles were also heavy, expensive, limited in range, and required a great deal of time to recharge, and these drawbacks could not be easily addressed with then-available technologies.

Inexpensive oil and the wide adoption of the electric self-starter during the mid-1910s ultimately enabled petroleum-powered vehicles to dominate the market. Still, automakers continued experimenting with electric power over the next century, and with the limits of internal combustion engineering now becoming ever more apparent, new interest in electric power has prompted the automobile industry to reintroduce electric vehicles as part of their mainstream marketing mix. Today, the demand for EVs is so strong that manufacturers who do not offer them are more the exception than the rule.

I plan to be at the exhibit opening this evening. I will be driving my 2021 i3S Rex Giga World.

I’ll conclude this article with another bit of proof that the i3 is “having a moment,” as my headline claims. Not only is arguably the greatest car museum in the world showcasing the car in a new exhibit, but the greatest automotive benchmarking company in the world (and YouTube powerhouse) Munro and Associates just put together a 42-minute homage to the i3. Check it out above.

Again, all this love for a 10-year-old small electric city car. If that’s not a testament to the car’s incredible engineering, I don’t know what is.

All images via The Petersen Automotive Museum or Tiziano Niero