HOW THE i3 CAME TO BE

There are secret projects in car companies all the time, but I’ll wager that very few have been squirrelled away in a loft above a former fire station. That’s where the i3 was born, hidden away even from other sections of BMW’S already secret development and innovation centre (FIZ) in Munich.

Wieland Bruch, a spokesperson for the BMW Group and someone involved with ‘i’ from the start, told us the i3 needed to be hidden because it was such a controversial idea, even within BMW.

Bruch says: “We had voices in the company saying that these engineers around the i3 are wasting all the money we have worked so hard to earn.

“But over the development of the car, the moment comes when other model line engineers want the interesting i3 modules for their own conventional projects. And that’s the moment we knew the company was behind us.”