BMW i3 REx: World’s Longest Range Plug-in Hybrid
Unmatched all-electric range. Disappointing sales.
Imagine this car is announced only now, and only in Europe, for the 2022 model year: a plug-in hybrid with how much all-electric range? 50 km? Okay. 100 km? Sounds too good to be true. 200 km? Unbelievable.
But that is the deal Americans get: a relatively expensive European city car which is also a plug-in hybrid and offers an all-electric range — 125 miles, or 200 km — which is far beyond anything the competitors have to offer.
BMW did not decide to call it a plug-in hybrid — and this is part of the problem. They preferred to market it as an electric car, with a small gasoline engine available as a piece of optional equipment. And that description is accurate, but still, let’s not get distracted from how good it is as a PHEVs.
The i3 REx is basically yet another EV which is not offered on the right continent. In Europe, EVs rose in popularity during 2020 (especially at the end of it), and that included a massive increase in PHEV sales too. But BMW cut the range-extended variant of the i3 from its European lineup before that happened.
Now Europeans are buying plug-in hybrids en masse, but those plug-in hybrids are much worse than the i3 REx when it comes to all-electric range. On a long holiday trip, they emit about as much CO₂ as other hybrids, because you probably won’t use chargers even if you encounter them along the way (because of severely limited charging speed — limited by the car, not the chargers). In the i3 REx, you realistically could use these chargers. It will slow you down, but often you will be able to make the whole trip on electric power alone.
And you still have a gasoline engine to go, well, everywhere (no matter if they have chargers or not).
In the first quarter of 2021, BMW sold 340 units of the i3 and the i3s in the United States (that total includes both variants, the all-electric one and the REx plug-in hybrid).
When you compare it to the sales of other BMW models, it’s a bit disappointing.
You could, of course, list a litany of reasons for this. Yes, in the United States, the plug-in vehicle market is much more Tesla-centric than in Europe (and also more dominated by BEVs as opposed to PHEVs). Yes, the gasoline engine in the i3 is a motorcycle engine, and the fuel tank is — intentionally — very tiny. Yes, the car comes in a small, “European” size and also with a not-that-low price tag (and possibly without the “cute” factor of the Mini, even if it’s a matter of personal taste).
But maybe it’s the dealer network.
I guess BMW dealers operate on the assumption that the i3, more weird than ostentatious, is not what the majority of customers coming to a BMW showroom want to buy. So they downplay the car’s existence.
Besides, what would be the incentive to sell the little i3 instead of an SUV? And why would they promote a vehicle that might not be instantly recognizable as a BMW (the brand has put a lot of effort — and multiple nostril size increases — into making its cars unmistakable)?
If only BMW had built a separate chain of stores, in which the i3 — or the Mega City Vehicle as it was originally known, too bad BMW did not keep that name — would be the main product displayed…
The good news is that regular BMW dealerships in the US might start selling sizable numbers of EVs quite soon. With the debut of the i4 and the iX, it looks like the company is getting serious about all-electric vehicles.
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The first photo is copied from a multi-part article about a 2015 BMW i3 REx (note: that version had shorter range) published on a great site called CarsWithPlugs.com.
