BMW i3 review

The i3 40 xDrive starts at £47,925; you’ll need £53,005 for the i3 50 xDrive. So it’s a fair bit cheaper than a C-Class Electric. A First Edition bundles in some additional equipment and costs £57,905.

Three trim levels are available: i3, i3 M Sport, and i3 M Sport Pro. Best to have a look at the configurator but the base car gets 19in alloys, heated and electrically adjustable front seats, wireless phone charging, Apple/Android connectivity, and adaptive cruise control. Level up and the M Sport goodies accumulate.

And what about the tech?

The i3’s tech also runs to charged-optimised route planning, which automatically preps the battery for faster charging. The BMW navigation system also gets in on the act, locating the best charging points, and using AI to work out the expected charging power, number of charging points, current occupancy and so on. Plus, the availability of nearby amenities. We wish we were this well organised. The i3’s charging flap is on the right hand side at the rear. It’ll open by itself if the car senses a familiar charging routine. Too much? Maybe.

There’s also the now obligatory suite of driving assistance packages, more than we can possibly cover here. But there’s a Driving Assistant Plus feature which takes control of your speed, the gap to the car ahead, and keeps the lane assist engaged; Level 2 autonomy means you can spec a Motorway Assistant for hands-free cruising.

Happily, the tech is now smoothing out the over-zealousness that still plagues some driver assistance systems. Even the speed limit chime was pretty chilled. The lane keeping stuff only intervenes if it senses impending disaster. At last, a techy new car that doesn’t infantilise the driver.

That said, we tried the semi-automated parking assist and it… didn’t work. But we hate that stuff anyway.