It feels like I’ve written this story a few times. Well, maybe I have, because BMW’s original “i” cars are refusing to die. Tucked away in the company’s quarterly statement is a surprising announcement: the i3 and i8 are still appearing in the sales charts, years after being discontinued.
Two were sold through March, though, per BMW’s frustrating modus operandi, i3/i8 sales are bundled. It doesn’t even matter whether both were i3s, i8s, or one of each. We remain amazed by how much unsold stock was left after production ended. While the i3 name lived on after the quirky hatchback was discontinued, sales of China’s long-wheelbase i3 sedan are lumped together with 3 Series Sedan figures.
BMW assembled the final i3 hatchback in mid-2022 after nine years of production and roughly 250,000 units built. The i8 is even older, having exited the lineup in mid-2020 after 20,465 plug-in hybrids produced in six years. Most i8s were coupes (16,581), while the roadster made up the remaining 3,884 units.
The “i” duo was exclusively manufactured at BMW’s Leipzig plant in Germany. You may recall that the i3 also had a combustion engine. It was a two-cylinder unit borrowed from one of BMW’s scooters and repurposed as a range extender. It didn’t power the wheels, instead acting as a generator to recharge the battery for a setup that’s seeing a resurgence nowadays.
Currently, the BMW Group is heavily relying on conventional plug-in hybrids. In the first quarter of the year, PHEV sales jumped by an impressive 25% to 47,935 units. Fully electric vehicles performed even better, with 86,440 units sold, or an increase of 9.9% over Q1 2024.
We’ll be watching the sales charts throughout the year to see if the i3 and i8 make another appearance. Fun fact: the duo accounted for 36 sales in 2024, down from 755 the previous year.
Source: BMW
