It seems like only yesterday that BMW sent the eccentric little i3 to the chopping block. In all actuality, the manufacturer struck the previous-gen EV from its lineup after the 2021 model year. In some weird twist of fate, at least one dealer has been hanging onto a brand new i3 on its lot—drastically sabotaging its time-to-turn stats while also preserving one of the final New Old Stock (NOS) examples of BMW's quirky electric car.
And now, years after being discontinued, sales figures have revealed that someone has purchased a brand new BMW i3 during the first quarter of 2024.
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The BMW i3 was the first car officially launched as part of BMW's i-brand. Its tiny battery had just 19 kWh of usable power which could propel the car just 80 miles without the optional range extender. Despite the limitations, it was such an important car for the marque.
It's been at least a year since BMW managed to sell any NOS examples of the i3. As BMW Blog points out, the automaker sold zero examples in 2023 and only 9 units in 2022. This comes after it stopped production of the U.S. spec i3 in mid-2021.
Unfortunately, we don't know how much this person paid for the car. The i3 ranged in price from $45,445 for the base model to $52,495 for the top-trimmed i3s with the range extender. While we don't know which trim this person purchased, it's hard not to picture the dealer cutting someone a good deal to get this older EV off its lot. That's especially true as fresh new EVs hit BMW lots, all of which feature newer architecture than BMW's decade-old platform.
The BMW i3 is unique among BMW EVs. After all, the i3 was a wildly designed car built on a bespoke platform, with over 250,000 worldwide sales during its nine-year production run. The newer i4 is more of a mass-market EV built on a shared modular platform that can also support internal combustion vehicles. Even some of those who eventually upgraded to a newer BMW EV like the i4 say that these newer Bimmers just don't have the same "magical feeling" that their i3s did.
Those new EVs also don't have a range extender like the i3 did. Granted, we don't know what trim or options were included in the lone i3 sold during the first quarter of 2024, but a range extender could have been enough to convince someone who may have been on the fence about whether or not to go electric. Hopefully, its batteries have faired well after all of these years sitting around.
Contact the author: Rob.Stumpf@InsideEVs.com
