The end of the first quarter of 2024 means we get a look at some of the oddities automakers sold in the first three months of this year. Usually, it’s pretty uneventful, but sometimes you get a little gems. Take BMW’s Q1 report for example. It’s all pretty run-of-the-mill until you notice a little “1” on its spreadsheet. That “1” represents a BMW i3. Yes, the car that was last in production for the 2021 model year. Some hero decided to spend their hard-earned money on a brand new three-year-old BMW electric car, and I love them for it.
Even when they were new, the i3 was a bit of a curiosity. In a lot of ways, it was ahead of its time. Back in 2013, not many automakers were bothering with EVs yet, and BMW still managed to give us this neat little electric pod. It was obviously not perfect. The i3 had just an 81-mile range when it first came out. The car incrementally improved, though. By the end of its run, it had a 153-mile range and a gas range extender called the REx that could bring you all the way up 200 miles of range. That’s not awful.
To me, what held the i3 back was its controversial styling. I liked the way it looked, but it was wacky for the time, and it probably turned off a whole lot of people. In total, BMW sold 45,098 i3s in the U.S., and 1,476 of those were during the 2021 model year. I don’t know how many brand-new i3s are out there at this point, but it cannot be very many. Just for reference, BMW says they didn’t sell any i3s in all of 2023, so I really don;’t know what’s going on here.
We don’t know how much the car sold for. I’m going to guess there was a fairly steep discount involved here. Regardless, I hope the funky little hatchback treats this guy right, and they treat it right. After all, even if the i3 was a little bit weird, it’s still a pretty important part of automotive history.