10 Things I Love About Our BMW i3

we have owned this BMW i3s since uh October and it's now January so we have had it through most of the fall and the winter and I've started to make up some thoughts about what's great about this car and what's not so great about this car so today we are going to go through the things I like so first up it's of course the price that's the reason why we bought this car in the first place it has depreciated and is now a an affordable EV to own and an affordable EV to buy most electric cars are quite expensive even though the prices have gone down uh lately but the BMW i3s have been on the market since 2014 even the 2019 model like this one has started to depreciate a lot that's the first thing the price and to the second point which is also related to the cost of ownership it is cheaper to have an electric car that is efficient than one that's not this one uses half the energy to move compared to for example an Audi rron Audi rron is not an efficient car at all and we actually thought about buying an Audi Eon because the Comfort level is so nice for the price compared to uh before because the car has depreciated just like this one the problem with the audron is that yeah it uses twice as much energy to move as this one and uh there are many reasons to go for this car and I'm going through all those uh now but that was one of the point the efficiency the efficiency is also good compared to other cars from this era like the leaf and the Volkswagen eolf this one also has a heat p pump so it's a little bit more efficient in the winter even though it loses quite a bit of range in the winter compared to a more modern designed EES like my Tesla m 3 the third thing I like about the BMW i3 is that it has a lot of space you might think that this is a small City car it is a city car because of the range but it is large the car is taller than all three we fit um oven we uh you know the oven we had broke we had to deliver it to the recycling station it didn't fit in my Tesla Model 3 it fit in this car due to the smart design of the hatchback the space in the cabin is unbeatable at uh at at this price point it's fantastic I'm pretty sure that it has more usable storage than the eolf and especially the Nissan Leaf much larger than you think and it's designed to look like a small car but it actually has a proper size the only thing you need to remember that this is a four- seater it's not a five-seater there is no seat in the middle back but there is no almost no gear tunnel it's a little hump but it's not noticeable it you can fold the seats flat and you have the hatchback and together it has a lot of usable space and I would even yeah it has more space than Tesla m 3 more usable space due to the sedon opening versus the hatchback of this one the fourth thing I like about the BMW i3s or the I3 it applies to both of them it is rear wheeel drive the Nissan Leaf and the eolf which is kind of in the same category and people who shop for this one usually shop for those two this one is the only one that is rare whee Drive I like rare wheeel drive cars some people like front-wheel drive cars and that's fine but for my from my experience RAR wheeel Drive is um it feels safe because you know when you slip and it is also extremely fun to drive especially when you have electric motors on the rare So this car can slide it can um accelerate in a fun way and it's fun to drive in the curves it is absolutely a fun car and I think that's important for many people as well so this one is rare wheeel Drive the fifth thing I like about this car is that it has Apple carplay I like my Tesla infotainment system it is awesome and in my opinion kind of unbeatable but it doesn't have apple carplay and for systems like the iDrive which I find a little bit more clumsy than the Tesla system I love to have the ability to use apple carplay that way I can just use navigation on my phone uh and it'll automatically update on the car I have access to my music easily and of course I can call uh in the car very easily and it just feels like a modern and nice system and makes this car so much better keep in mind that not all trims are available with apple carplay I think every I3 from 2018 and up with the large navigation I think it's Pro navigation has the ability to add Apple carplay it's around $300 I think as a software upgrade which I don't like by the way but that's that's how you get it and then you have apple carplay but please make sure that the car is Apple carplay ready or can add the Apple carplay before you buy the I3 it's an awesome addition to the car the sixth thing I like about the BMW i3s is that it has the Harmon Cardon system and it sounds pretty nice not as nice as my Tesla not as nice as many other systems but it's perfectly adequate for the car and I would uh consider doing the upgrade uh to Harmon Cardon if you have multiple trims that you have available I would consider getting the one with the Harmon Card system the base system is can't be any good to be honest because the Harmon Card is just adequate but it's definitely something I like about this car and I like that we chose that option with the harman Cardon when we bought it used so please consider the Harmon Card system then you will get a nice sound system and the car will be way more fun the seventh thing I like about this car is the range and I just told you that this is a city car with low range and it is but this car has 280 km wheel top range and that makes it usable in Norway to drive between cities not Bergen and Oslo but we have relatives in Stavanger which is south of Bergen and we can drive there on one charge and that's uh a 4our plus trip without charging isn't that pretty awesome and this car it doesn't have a charge limit because it has a large buffer so you don't take that much damage uh charging it to 100% while I do recommend not charging it to 100% all the time uh if you're storing it please store it at like 40 or 50% but that means we start at 100% And we arrive with our relatives in Stavanger from Bergen uh at around 25 20 uh 25 30% depending on the conditions and we have only driven it in the worst conditions so it can only be better in the summer and that's perfect we bought this car for a use case and that was uh as a second car uh in addition to the Tesla and it is awesome to be able to actually do these strips because that fits our schedule perfectly so how do I know that the car fits our travel needs well use a better root planner and then just put in um just put in the car the specs and the route that you plan to drive often and then you can see if it fits your uh traveling and this one does and that's a nice thing about this car eighth thing I like about this car is its uniqueness and that comes from the sign it comes from the engineering of the car design engineering and the looks of the car mainly those two points and it is unique in that sense that it is out of production so you can't get any more of them on the roads in Norway there are quite a few of them but we have the i3s and we have a nice blue color so it's a little bit unique uh it's much more unique than my Tesla everyone in Norway drives a Tesla it is unique and cool and it's designed with a very nice purpose of being efficient and a lot of thought went into the design of this car with um hemp Plastics in the interior and the carbon fiber reinforced plastics for the entire cockpit of the car and Al aluminium for the drivetrain uh underneath and everything that went into this car I can as an engineer I can appreciate the design of this car um in more ways than just the looks but I also think it looks kind of cute funny and a little bit um smug I think yeah I think that's a word for it the ninth thing I like about the BMW i3s is the turning radius and it's fantastic and uh of course it's rear whe drive and that usually not in all cases but that usually means a better turning radius since you have more uh you're turning on the front wheels of course and you have uh more place to turn the wheels really and it also have it has kind of like a long wheel base but it's shorter than many other cars anyways and together it makes for awesome turning radius really easy to park perfect in City environments perfect in uh Western Norway where the uh roads are very tiny and you need to uh get into like meeting places on the road because the uh the road is not uh wide enough to fit both and it's very easy to park and it's easy to place exactly where you want it and that's a very nice thing about this car the 10th thing I like about the BMW i3s is the speed this car is light it's much lighter than my Tesla Mel 3 it's much lighter than competing cars it of course has a small battery but it's fast enough it's fast enough to drive at highway speeds it's fast enough to pass people at highway speeds pass people on the road it doesn't go fast from 0 to 60 I think it's around 7 seconds or something very slow but it kicks accelerates fast even at high speeds and that's something I really like about the car it's not slowing you down it's not uh creating dangerous situations because it's not fast enough to keep up with traffic you can get out of the way of slow moving cars on the highway it's fast enough and that was 10 things I like about the BMW i3s I have planned a lot more videos on this car so please subscribe for that but also leave a comment what do you want to see me test with this car people send a comment what I want to see in the car and I make the videos so please just leave a comment if you like the video and want to learn more about the BMW i3 maybe we should do um like um uh how how how you look for the right spec when you when you buy used because you have to buy this car used maybe that's a nice video idea please leave in the comments below what you think thank you so much for watching if you want to see more videos like this and videos that are not like this you can sub subscribe to this 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Channel: Roaming Norway

Views: 12,978

Keywords: ev, tesla, norway, electric, vehicle, test, roadtrip, road trip content

Id: 8QQe5nmIXkk

Length: 12min 46sec (766 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 05 2024