Update June 15: Readers tell us that the price of the BMW i3 starts at €40,000 (~$53,000). I’m also told that the “reservations” are actually just reservations to test drive the vehicle, which makes more sense but wasn’t clear from our source.
BMW has been slow to the electric vehicle game. Or maybe it has just been timing itself carefully. The BMW i3, which I featured back in March and which is scheduled to hit European markets at the end of the year, already has over 100,000 reservations, according to BMW’s Ian Robertson.
Notably, those include reservations with and without deposits. But nonetheless…. And Robertson says a “significant number” of them have actually made deposits.
As I wrote back in March, the i3 is a beauty. And, clearly, coming from a trusted, high-quality brand doesn’t hurt.
Robertson, who was interviewed by Automotive News Europe (subscription required), also emphasized that BMW has been pushing the electric vehicle envelope while developing the i3 and i8 (which will be a bit more pricey and will come to market a bit later).
“We are confident that with the i3 and i8 we will shift the [customer demand] needle because we will shape some of this technology,” Robertson noted.
Well, we’ll see. In either case, though, it looks like BMW is likely to see good sales of the i3 (as far as we can tell at this point). I wonder if it will eat into Tesla’s pie a bit.
I didn’t think this one would see the light of day. I thought it would be scrapped with the other EV projects that each car maker started talking about back in 08-09. Remember the Dodge Circuit?
Same here. Thought i heard it was scrapped at some point. Apparently not….