BMW 330e F30

[ashenfie]

caseys said:

SWoll said:

Yep. No way I'd be brave enough to run an out of warranty hybrid, they're a bank account emptying accident waiting to happen IMHO.

Out of interest, what went wrong with your i3? We have a 120ah for a year and 20k miles back in 2019 and it never mised a beat. Considering buying a used one at some point so be good to know.

So it was on 48K in March 2022. Got it I think March 2019, they held It for the '19' plate. as it was ready late feb 2019.

Had the ARBs replaced due to excess knocking about a year in. Took it back the next day as the knocking was still there. Was steering fine, tires were still on the first set. It was just.... very very noisy.

They looked at it again and said oh, the NSF shock has in fact entirely ruptured. We can't release the car back to you and we now need to keep it 3 days whilst we get a replacement. I'm surprised I didn't notice wallowing/bad rebound.

I asked how the **** that was missed the day before when replacing the ARB and the drop links. They weren't sure. Suddenly a courtesy car was available because of this.

A few times the car steered to the left violently under 30mph after setting off. So much so I pulled over and checked visual alignment and that I suddenly didn't have a puncture. Never kerbed a wheel on it.

Got back in and as soon as you drove at > 30mph it steered true (so not a physical tracking problem). Went up and down a 40mph road and could prove it would do it / stop doing it at the 30mph threshold. As described by this chap here - https://www.reddit.com/r/BMWi3/comments/o4n292/has... )
Edit : And here https://www.mybmwi3.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1641... - so it's been a long known, infrequently occurring issue.

That probably happened to me 5 or so times. I even pulled over the first few times and stopped the car to check all the wheels were looking straight and true - they were. Getting back in the car having put it in P and driving off it did it again. Only locking car completely seemed to cure this. Took it to BMW to ask them to look at it. "No fault found". So it's some sort of distinct software issue. Whenever it did it the trigger point was under 30mph, always pulling to the left. You'd literally have to steer a good 10-15 degrees to the right to keep the car straight.

I couldn't correlate anything to cause this. Parking it TDC on the steering. parking it full lock either way. Parking it at any steering angle. Parking it after reversing it with those same steering angles. So that kind of threw my confidence in their software. I nearly wanted to get a friend to video internal and externally the car doing it when it happened, but never managed to line that up.

That behaviour only ever appeared after getting in and turning the car on. It never appeared in the middle of a journey. When it happened it was manageable but annoying - and you wondered if you were counter steering and possibly crabbing down the road.

Driver's seat was replaced due to the stupid seatbelt points wearing the side bolster down past the leather in the loft interior about a year in. I had to sit in the car and show the service guy that it was definitely the design of the seatbelt and it's lower attaching point that was doing this, not me wearing jeans etc. They replaced that under warranty. So you'd want to get a seatbelt pad for the lower part of the seatbelt if you want to keep those bolsters intact - it's a design flaw.

I agree they're a lovely car otherwise. Drive like a go-kart. Lots of space inside for it's physical footprint. Efficient as heck, I was getting 6.2m/kWh at times. The rear doors are a bit of a PITA for passengers in car parks. I'd happy have another as a low cost company car where everything's maintained. I would not want to own one past a warranty if having it as a daily and owning privately. Maybe as a local runaround and have another car if needed.

It ate rear tires far more than the fronts. The stupid sizes are expensive - I worked out it cost 3-4x more in tires per mile than the electricity it used. I think in the 2.5 years It had nearly £900 in tires.

The three BMWs I've had, all from new, since 2012 have had their litany of errors (like the entire iDrive and all the injectors replaced...). They've nice cars to drive when they work. My highly tuned mk4 Supras were more reliable tbh.

Edit 2 : I'd buy an i3 2nd hand over an ID3. 330e vs ID3? The ID3. Just.

Edited by caseys on Thursday 4th August 16:52

Edited by caseys on Thursday 4th August 17:02

It strange some people have problems others a few. I have had a few and the only issue I had was when I was doing. 50K a. years nad at 150K the clutch needed replacing, I have 5 BMWs. Naturally Tyres and brakes etc too.

[s1962a]

I'm on my 3rd 330e (both F30 and G20) and found them all to be very reliable. I had them almost from new, but one I kept for 4 years and no issues at all other than servicing. Not even brakes, and I do a lot of town driving. One of them had the fuel pump replaced under warranty when it went in for a service - part of a recall apparently.

[TheDeuce]

s1962a said:

I'm on my 3rd 330e (both F30 and G20) and found them all to be very reliable. I had them almost from new, but one I kept for 4 years and no issues at all other than servicing. Not even brakes, and I do a lot of town driving. One of them had the fuel pump replaced under warranty when it went in for a service - part of a recall apparently.

Yea we all got that recall done for free. And I recall another recall notice too, can't remember what for. But anyway, apart from those preventative replacements I never had a single issues with the 330d or 430d. Very solid cars and they were not driven kindly