A city car at heart
BMW’s excellent i3s
Let’s say you quite like the idea of a BMW i3, but you just wish it was a bit sportier. Y’know, like if BMW would just slap an ‘‘S’’ at the end of the badge or something.
Well, you are in luck, because BMW New Zealand has just released the BMW i3s, the answer to all your dreams.
That extra S will cost you $8700 over the standard i3, with the BEV i3s you see here landing at $85,900 (the range-extender costs $93,600). But for that extra money BMW has added a number of other things, along with that S.
For a start there is more power and torque.
Admittedly not a huge amount of it, but there is some.
The i3s packs 135kW of power and 270Nm of torque, compared with the standard i3’s 125kW and
250Nm.
But BMW has also tweaked the way that power is delivered in the
i3s – where the standard car has Comfort, EcoPro and EcoPro+ modes, the i3s gets an extra Sport mode that remaps the throttle response to give you a whole load more punch with less input, meaning that the i3s fair belts off the line and out of corners in a way that is alarming and amusing.
The net result of this is a car that scampers to 100kmh from a standing start in 6.9 seconds, but feels far quicker thanks to the virtually instant power delivery of the electric motor – it will hit
60kmh in just 3.7 seconds and cover 30-70kmh in 2.5 seconds.
More importantly in the real world, it will go from 80-120kmh in just 4.3 seconds, or less than a second slower than the ferocious
i8.
BMW has also added some meaningful mechanical tweaks to the i3s, with those flared guards hiding a 40mm-wider track, while it also sits 10mm lower than the standard i3 and also gets larger
20-inch alloy wheels.
This translates into a car that is not only quicker than the standard i3, but also more stable and, weirdly, has a better ride – where the standard car is quite firm and occasionally brittle, BMW has taken the edge off that brittleness in the i3s, which is noticeably firm, but never harsh.
All of this adds up to a car that is an absolute blast around town, with ballistic performance away from traffic lights and some serious open road-passing grunt when needed too.
The more stable feel and wider track also make it something of a blast out on a winding back road as well and, while the steering isn’t exactly sports-car sharp it is more than enough to have you grinning like a lunatic as you belt out of a corner with some seriously neck-snapping acceleration.
But this fun doesn’t last forever and, surprisingly, it isn’t the skinny tyres that put an eventual end to the fun, nor is it an intrusive stability system.
Nope, both of those things are rather excellent on the i3s, with the skinny little tyres (175/60s on the front and 195/50s on the rear) providing a thoroughly remarkable amount of grip and the seriously clever new stability system hardly ever noticeably intervening.
No, it is that traditional enemy of batteries that cuts the fun in the i3s – that is, heat.
If you have been belting the i3s out of corners for an extended period of time, eventually it will start limiting the amount of power you can have, meaning the performance becomes somewhat less electrifying.
Still, it’s your own fault – this is a city car you fool! What are you playing at?
And that is true, because belting it away from traffic lights all day never sees this happen, because you simply aren’t on full throttle very long.
Neither does it happen on an extended blasts on a motorway or main road, thanks to all that sweet, sweet cool air running through it.
What this means is that the i3s won’t make a very good track day car (but you would have really been expecting a lot from that S there, buddy), but it does make for a thoroughly excellent city car that is also more than capable of fast, open road causing and, yes, even a bit of back road silliness if you feel so inclined.
The fantastic interior and remarkably amounts of usable space inside the i3s only serve to reinforce that whole city car thing, while its tiny turning circle, brilliant visibility and impressively quick charging times (45 minutes to 80 per cent on a fast DC charger, just under three hours on a fast AC charger or seven-and-a-half hours on a standard household plug) also help to make it remarkably easy to live with around town.
A full charge will give you a thoroughly usable 200km of range on average, which is more than enough to cover the average citydweller’s daily commute for a week.
Take it out on a regular back road blast though an it will drop a bit quicker, but is generally worth it.
While the i3s is still very much a city-focused thing, that added S brings enough sportiness to make taking it out of the city every so often a rewarding experience.
A full charge will give you a thoroughly usable 200km of range on average, which is more than enough to cover the average city-dweller’s daily commute for a week.