So who's getting an i3?

[Greg_D]

i was always happy enough with the standard audio.
my hearing isn't that good, so the harmon kardon was wasted on me...

[SOL111]

JackReacher said:

Thanks, I think that's made up my mind, i3s it will be.

Couple of other questions for owners regarding spec.

What is the standard audio like? My demo car had HK and didn't find it that impressive. The advanced audio in my 2 series is better.

Can anyone confirm whether the sunroof loses the carbon roof? I've read mixed things. Nice to have the extra light but quite a bit more weight with glass and loss of carbon roof potentially.

If you don't like the HK then you'll hate the standard speakers. There are only two so you can imagine the quality.

I agree about the HK in the i3 though. I've got used to it and find it ok but my wife has the HK in her 4 series and it's superb.

[biggles330d]

JackReacher said:

Thanks, I think that's made up my mind, i3s it will be.

Couple of other questions for owners regarding spec.

What is the standard audio like? My demo car had HK and didn't find it that impressive. The advanced audio in my 2 series is better.

Can anyone confirm whether the sunroof loses the carbon roof? I've read mixed things. Nice to have the extra light but quite a bit more weight with glass and loss of carbon roof potentially.

Both my first i3 and current i3s have HK, I haven't tried the standard stereo but I am an avid Radio 6 listener while I'm in the car and like to have it turned up a bit. The other half has a TT with standard stereo and frankly there's nothing more irritating that having to put up with a less than fulsome sound.

Pro-nav and fast DC charging is now standard (it was an option on my first one). I was being picky with options to keep the i3s below £40k but at the last minute discovered that road tax is included in my leasing payments for 3 years so I got the dealer to requote with the suite interior and the options I really wanted which took it to about £42k list, and the monthlies dropped about £80/month! Seems an i3s with suite interior is considered to have a notably better residual value.

I had dark glass on my first one - it was white with black windows and the 5 spoke black/silver wheels. Looked like a storm trooper helmet, but I quite liked it. I've not got dark glass on the new one as it's red and looked better with clear glass.
My original one had the standard cloth interior, but the suite interior really lifts thinks in my view. I quite like the brown leather dashboard and seats and dark wood.
I also added the rear view camera to my new one as I reverse down our drive every day. It's an ok quality but doesn't take much to get muck on the lens so in winter its actual usefulness is debatable unless you keep it clean.

[SOL111]

So you've gone from the storm trooper to deadpool look

Love the red but wasn't an option for me (stock car).

[JackReacher]

SOL111 said:

If you don't like the HK then you'll hate the standard speakers. There are only two so you can imagine the quality.

I agree about the HK in the i3 though. I've got used to it and find it ok but my wife has the HK in her 4 series and it's superb.

Yes I take your point that standard would only be worse, but is HK £650 better? Perhaps so if it only has 2 speakers in the standard system!

[JackReacher]

Heres Johnny said:

Can't really help with the hifi, if you don't rate the HK system I can't see you being happy with the basic one.

As for the sunroof... taken from bmw website "When specifying this option, the roof panel at the rear is changed from Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastic (CFRP) to Aluminium painted Black. The front remains the same in glass."

And unless you're thinking of leasing check out the nearly new market, i3s 120 with low miles are now under 28k from BMW like this one

https://tesla-info.com/BMW/detail.php?ref=2f7d5d07...

You can also still get virtually delivery mile i3s 94Rex for 28k too.

Thanks for the info on the sunroof, shame it does lose the carbon roof, need to consider whether it's worth it.

I have considered a lightly used one as some look great value like the one you linked, but even then the company car option seems to work out cheaper. They obviously get some discount and then the tax advantages from April make it very good value.

[SOL111]

JackReacher said:

SOL111 said:

If you don't like the HK then you'll hate the standard speakers. There are only two so you can imagine the quality.

I agree about the HK in the i3 though. I've got used to it and find it ok but my wife has the HK in her 4 series and it's superb.

Yes I take your point that standard would only be worse, but is HK £650 better? Perhaps so if it only has 2 speakers in the standard system!

That's a good question. Now that I've parted with some cash then yes but it depends if this is a personal purchase and if you're going to keep the car.

You could always swap the two out afterwards.

[uknick]

Standard system has 4 speakers. 1 in each door and a bass speaker in the footwell on each side.

I tend to listen to MP3 files stored on the hard drive so will always get variable quality dependent upon what rate I ripped them.

[Major T]

I've heard both and I'd say the HK upgrade is well worth it.
I've spent more than £650 upgrading my standard system and spent hours messing with a DSP but I'm still not particularly happy with it. Agree the HK system isn't brilliant but it's still a significant upgrade.

[JackReacher]

Having decided to go for the S model I'm now finding the £40k additional tax threshold a bit annoying, 1st world problems

I've decided to go with the basic grey atelier interior, imperial blue metallic, eucalyptus wood trim, sun protection glass, HK sound, front parking sensors. That takes it to £39,830. Do I need blue seatbelts at £120?

I was considering the sunroof for the extra light but would need to lose the HK for that. The sunroof also loses the carbon roof as confirmed by someone here which is a shame.

[Jacobyte]

JackReacher said:

Having decided to go for the S model I'm now finding the £40k additional tax threshold a bit annoying, 1st world problems

I've decided to go with the basic grey atelier interior, imperial blue metallic, eucalyptus wood trim, sun protection glass, HK sound, front parking sensors. That takes it to £39,830. Do I need blue seatbelts at £120?

I was considering the sunroof for the extra light but would need to lose the HK for that. The sunroof also loses the carbon roof as confirmed by someone here which is a shame.

I don't get the blue seatbelt thing (or any of the "blue" references on any purportedly efficient car). Save your cash.

Can you still get the "Plus Package"? This combines the HK, Sun Protection glass and other stuff, so might work in your favour rather than adding them independently. Worth a look.

In general the HK is good quality but needs more low-end oomph, perhaps one could install a sub where the void when the REX would be?

[mattcov]

JackReacher said:

Having decided to go for the S model I'm now finding the £40k additional tax threshold a bit annoying, 1st world problems

I've decided to go with the basic grey atelier interior, imperial blue metallic, eucalyptus wood trim, sun protection glass, HK sound, front parking sensors. That takes it to £39,830. Do I need blue seatbelts at £120?

I was considering the sunroof for the extra light but would need to lose the HK for that. The sunroof also loses the carbon roof as confirmed by someone here which is a shame.

I leased it and got the lease company to soak up the tax (and it was even more with the REX) - the price difference certainly wasn't £40 extra a month. The sound differs depending on the input. I find HK best with iPhone connected via USB and then running Spotify etc - you can control the equalizer and bass a bit more and it sounds good. Its noticeably better than Bluetooth streaming, via USB or from the HDD.


Not entirely sure the front parking sensors are much use. Plus Pack would be worth getting. If you don't pick an "interior" you loose the interior lighting, footwell, handles + different colours etc (unless they've added it to 2019 build year).

[SOL111]

Don't anyone talk down the blue seatbelts. They're the business. I really fancied them but hey ho, you don't get everything with a stock car.

If you fancy them, get them!

[mattcov]

In fact one option I would look at instead of sunroof is the heat pump. I'm not sure anyone has been through a winter yet in a 120 with or without it, but must help with the range.

[JackReacher]

mattcov said:

Not entirely sure the front parking sensors are much use. Plus Pack would be worth getting. If you don't pick an "interior" you loose the interior lighting, footwell, handles + different colours etc (unless they've added it to 2019 build year).

I think the front sensors would have been useful in the demo I had, although completely possible to go without them! The plus pack is reasonable value if I also wanted the black alloys, but suspect that would look a bit gangster. You are right that the base interior doesn't come with all the fancy lighting, would be nice to have but i dont like the lighter interiors.

mattcov said:

In fact one option I would look at instead of sunroof is the heat pump. I'm not sure anyone has been through a winter yet in a 120 with or without it, but must help with the range.

That's an interesting one, I get the theory but it's quite expensive without really knowing what the actual benefit would be in winter. From what I understand, if you pre condition in winter then it may not be so useful, but it's all a bit unknown. If it offered an extra 30-50 miles in cold weather it would probably be worth it.

[Heres Johnny]

Speculating on the heat pump, I think cabin heaters are about 3kw max, let’s say that’s what they use, and a heat pump halves that. The saving would be 1.5kw -> 1.5kwh in an hour of use or about 6 miles of lost range. If you’d driven 60 miles in the hour, that’s a 10% loss. Given a 120 can do around 180 miles at best it’s say a 20mile saving but I doubt the heater would run flat out so that’s best/worst case depending how you look at it. Happy to be corrected on my man maths

[Tony427]

Heres Johnny said:

Speculating on the heat pump, I think cabin heaters are about 3kw max, let’s say that’s what they use, and a heat pump halves that. The saving would be 1.5kw -> 1.5kwh in an hour of use or about 6 miles of lost range. If you’d driven 60 miles in the hour, that’s a 10% loss. Given a 120 can do around 180 miles at best it’s say a 20mile saving but I doubt the heater would run flat out so that’s best/worst case depending how you look at it. Happy to be corrected on my man maths

So we are looking at a £40k car ( approx) and we are looking at the decision tree needed to decide whether we are to freeze our nuts off so we can get home on a cold winters day.

Really.

[Heres Johnny]

Tony427 said:

Heres Johnny said:

Speculating on the heat pump, I think cabin heaters are about 3kw max, let’s say that’s what they use, and a heat pump halves that. The saving would be 1.5kw -> 1.5kwh in an hour of use or about 6 miles of lost range. If you’d driven 60 miles in the hour, that’s a 10% loss. Given a 120 can do around 180 miles at best it’s say a 20mile saving but I doubt the heater would run flat out so that’s best/worst case depending how you look at it. Happy to be corrected on my man maths

So we are looking at a £40k car ( approx) and we are looking at the decision tree needed to decide whether we are to freeze our nuts off so we can get home on a cold winters day.

Really.

I read people discussing whether to get the carbon ceramic brakes or not on their car. £100k and theyre discussing if they are going to be able to stop or not.

Yes, really.

[caseys]

120Ah i3 driver here. Have the HK stereo (test drove models without and stock hifi is *AWFUL* even for podcasts). Also have the heat pump - which remember works *both ways* for heating and for AC. I can't re-iterate enough how bad the stock stereo is even if you're just listening to talk radio. At 70-80mph it's just distorty and not loud enough even with a car without an engine in it.

I'd agree the man maths above about 3kw for a standard heater matrix / ac unit vs I think it's 1kw for the heat pump.

Example for me is I drove Birmingham to Bournemouth, due to traffic a 170 mile route. Took 3 hours too, in the dark in the summer, with a bit of traffic, I averaged 5.4miles/kWh on the trip and got home with 19% state of charge. That was with lights on, HK on, AC on. In three hours I'd saved that means 6kW of energy, or basically 6x5 = 30 miles of range. And yeah, I was averaging about 60-65mph as it was the first big trip I took in my own i3 and the route I was taking to save time had bugger all chaging points. After that trip I'm now happy to know I can hop in and do a 150+ mile leg of a trip easily and with a quick charge somewhere means a 300-350mile day is absolutely fine.

Also my normal daily commute when I go into the office is 80 miles - mainly A338 and M27/M3, so 90% of it is NSL. In the summer 18-20C I'll get there having used 40% charge and I'm doing 70-80 leptons when I can. In the cold days at the start of march I was getting there having used about 48%, with a bit of pre-conditioning at home beforehand.

Yeah, sometimes you're wondering about power budgets on a long trip and it feels like you're in Apollo 13 counting every damn amp There's a display in the idrive showing power draw of ancilliaries. Sometimes I've flipped the AC on and it's only lost 2-5 miles of range. Then ramp the heat pump up even more and it dips a bit more, so it's completely variable.

I will say one thing poor about the cabin design is the lack of vents towards the back of the cabin, I think there's just some under the front seats if that. I had a trip where it was 4 adults and they guys in the back were saying whilst it was spacious it wasn't the coolest. Not something I'd thought of whilst looking at them and didn't find out about in any testing. Coming from a 330e the i3 has a lot of glass it does seem to warm up quite quickly in the sun and also then cool down quite quickly in the winter.

Had my car since start of March, so 5 months, car's just rolled over to 10.5k mileage. Also had the windscreen already replaced once

It's a lovely place to be. I'll be getting a Tesla I think when the lease on this is up in 2021.

Happy to answer any questions.

[so called]

Picked up my new i3S last Friday.
I loved my 2016 i3 and am very much enjoying the 'improved' road characteristics of the S.