2014 BMW i3

The BMW i3 is most successful from the front, front three-quarter, and side views. The snub nose and distinctive profile of the tall shape, and the i3's wide stance, with wheels at the very corners of the car, give it a solid stance and a presence that belies its relatively small footprint. The large and handsome 19-inch wheels help as well (the same trick used on the Scion iQ), although the narrow tires can be disconcerting when the car is shown with its front wheels cocked--that's when they look far too small for their openings. Big chunky door handles reinforce the sturdy image.

It all dissolves into a confusing blend of straight lines and curves at the rear, though. The body sides extend slightly past the tailgate below the window line, giving the i3 either vestigial tail fins or perhaps jowls. The rear fascia and bumper shield sweep back and up to the base of the high load deck (which has the traction motor and drive unit below it). The U-shaped tail lights, hidden under the black glass of the rear hatch, are outlined with a mix of curved and straight shapes and outlines. Overall, the rear of the i3 just has too many design elements that clash with each other, and it's the least successful aspect of a distinctive design.

Inside, the i3 is unlike any BMW you've seen before--and far more akin to a loft living room with carefully selected Scandinavian modern furniture. The 10.2-inch central display screen, controlled via the iDrive knob on the console, sits on a stalk above a useful wide and shallow bin in the top surface of the dashboard. A smaller screen behind the steering wheel also sits proud of the dash surface, rather than enclosed in a binnacle like virtually every other car's.

BMW proudly touts interior panels made of kenaf, a renewable fiber, though to our eyes their mottled finish looks like they were supposed to be covered in something else. It's fine for the far part of the dash top, but the portions of the door panels finished that way rather look like they've had their covering stripped off. That's the only sour note in an otherwise simple but elegant interior. The textiles are tight weaves, in light or dark colors, and while you can get the mostly-black treatment, you can also have a lighter, more living-room-like palette of greys, creams, and earth tones with contrasting stitching. It's surprisingly elegant, and unlike anything else BMW sells.

The optional wood covering for the glovebox door is open-grain eucalyptus, with no sheen at all. Its texture adds to the natural feel of the fabrics and seat coverings, which include leather dyed in olive extracts, as well as wool. There are (inevitably) molded black plastic elements to the interior, but they're in the background, with the lighter and more novel materials catching the eye.

The i3 is also a fine highway car, within the limits of its range, but we found it slightly sensitive to sidewinds and quite firm riding.

The electric BMW's 22-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack in mounted in the floor and liquid-cooled. It powers a 125-kilowatt (170-horsepower) electric motor that produces 184 lb-ft of torque to drive the rear wheels. That makes the BMW i3 the only rear-wheel-drive electric car on the market aside from the Tesla Model S. The motor is located under the load deck on the left side of the differential; at the right is an empty space where the range extender and generator package goes on cars ordered with it.

The BMW i3 differs from every other electric car, however, in its approach to regenerative braking. The solution BMW chose distinguishes the i3 drive experience from electric cars that simply mimic the behavior of a gasoline car with an automatic transmission. The strong regenerative braking makes the i3 the first production car we've driven since the original Tesla Roadster that truly permits one-pedal driving. And the effort BMW put into its well-calibrated control software really shows.

The feature can catch new drivers unaware--on our first drive, lifting off the accelerator while going down a parking garage ramp slowed the car to a complete stop, pointed downhill--but it takes only a few minutes to learn. There's no idle creep, though we didn't miss it. And BMW has retained a gliding or coasting mode, between acceleration and regen, although the software control is now so seamless that you have to watch the power display through the steering wheel to find it. There's no tactile or seat-of-the-pants indication that the motor has disengaged, unlike the cruder software used in the BMW ActiveE test fleet, when you could feel the motor disengage.

Because the regenerative braking can slow the car by recharging the battery at up to 50 kilowatts, the brake pedal only triggers the friction brakes--it does not induce or increase regeneration, which is controlled entirely from the accelerator pedal. In most uses, once a driver has learned how to modulate the accelerator, the friction brakes rarely need to be used in real-world conditions. They're mostly for sudden or panic stops.

We noticed that in both BMW i3 cars we tested, there was a slight creak from the front of the car just as it came to a stop using the brake pedal. BMW engineers said this is a slight slippage of the pad on the disc, a sound normally masked by engine and transmission noise in other cars. That may be, but we've not experienced it on any other electric car; the engineers said they are working on a fix for the problem.

To start the BMW i3, the proximity fob must be in the car, and the driver's foot must be on the brake pedal. The start button is on the inside of a rotary controller behind the steering wheel on the right that lets the driver choose forward or reverse, and also holds a "Park" button. The electric parking brake is far enough back on the tunnel, at the base of the storage bin and armrest, that we had to have it pointed out to us.

Buttons on the console let the driver select "Eco Pro" or "Eco Pro+" mode, to stretch battery range a bit further (BMW says about 12 and 25 percent, respectively). Unlike Eco modes in most other cars, the BMW i3's efficiency modes leave the car responsive and capable of keeping up with traffic. The EcoPro+ setting more aggressively restricts the energy devoted to heating or cooling the cabin; it's the "wear a down jacket" setting that will keep the car going as far as it can in cold winter weather. A kickdown function in the accelerator lets drivers override either EcoPro mode when sudden performance is needed in unexpected driving situations.

The i3's ride is well controlled, but the stiffer sidewalls of the very tall, narrow tires mean it's not soft. During a handling test, it was relatively easy to get the front tires to squeal on fast, sharp turns. We also noticed that the rear of the car jittered and skipped in fast cornering on broken surfaces. And because the car's heavy battery pack is mounted low, in the floor, but occupants sit straight up on top of it, the sensation of body roll is amplified. The BMW i3 rides well enough, but it's not a car you're going to want to take to track days or slalom courses.

Our two test cars were delivered with full batteries that registered available range of 132 km and 141 km (82 and 88 miles, respectively). It's rated by the EPA at a range of 81 miles, and because the sum of distance traveled and distance remaining stayed close to those original figures on our test cars--regardless of driving style--we expect the BMW i3 to deliver real-world range of 75 to 90 miles. It earns one gold prize, however: For 2014, the BMW i3 is the most efficient car of any kind sold in the U.S. It earns an efficiency rating of 124 MPGe, or Miles Per Gallon Equivalent, a measure that indicates how far an electric car can travel on the same amount of energy that's found in 1 gallon of gasoline.

The front seats were specially designed with extremely thin backs, but they're comfortable and well bolstered nonetheless. The seating position is upright and higher than some other small cars, giving the driver a good view ahead at the level of other traffic. The tilting and telescoping steering wheel has an unusual wide range of adjustment, making it possible for almost any size of driver to be comfortable.

The rear seats are tight for full-sized adults, and we don't expect the i3 to carry four people very often. They're also awkward to get to; while the rear-hinged "carriage doors" reveal a single opening without a central pillar, they're not full-sized doors and the seat actually sits further back inside than the opening. Also, rear passengers can't get out of the car on their own--the front-seat occupants ahead of them have to open their own doors first. As with most cars that have their batteries in the floorpan, the feet of rear-seat passengers sit higher than they would in the foot well of a conventional gasoline car, so there's a bit of the knees-under-chin feel to sitting in the rear.

On the road, there's almost no whine from the motor or electronics inside the cabin, except occasionally at maximum power. That's a testament to BMW's noise insulation team, because you can certainly hear a whine from the outside when an i3 passes by. The European-market cars we drove had no synthetic noise generator to alert pedestrians, and it's unclear if U.S. cars will launch with one before any Federal regulations to require it.

We did notice wind noise during our road tests, especially in gusty weather, but it wasn't intrusive. It would likely have been masked by mechanical noise in a conventional car, pointing out the different challenges electric-car designers must contend with.

Neither the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) nor the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has yet tested a BMW i3 for crash safety. But both entities are likely to do so in short order, given the intense interest in the use of strong, lightweight carbon fiber to reduce weight and improve fuel efficiency in vehicles of all types.

The i3 has the usual quotient of six airbags, including dash-mounted front bags for the driver and front passenger, bags in the sides of the front seats, and side curtains over the windows for front and rear passengers. BMW notes that the bags built into the front seats are a brand-new design that's small enough to fit into the slim, lightweight seat frames.

The electric BMW also has all the mandatory safety systems--including anti-lock brakes, electronic stability and traction control, and tire-pressure monitoring. Optional systems will likely include radar adaptive cruise control, parking proximity sensors, automatic crash-avoidance braking, and other advanced warning and control functions.

The frontal vision from inside the i3 is good, except for the large rearview mirror and camera housing in the top center of the windshield. But the right-side and rear three-quarter vision are only adequate. A rearview camera could assist drivers in seeing what's close behind the tail, especially as the rear load floor is quite high because the motor and drivetrain sit below it; whether the i3's camera will be optional or standard has not yet been decided.

One feature likely to become standard--next year, if not this year--is a rearview camera, which is Europe is offered as part of a Safety Package that also included systems like automatic braking for crash avoidance and adaptable cruise control.

And even if a BMW i3 is recharged from the oldest, dirtiest coal power plants in the nation, it remains cleaner--comparing "wells-to-wheels" carbon emitted through the process of creating the fuel as well as powering the car--than any gasoline car sold today that isn't a hybrid. In California, which will see more plug-in sales than the next five states combined, the grid is relatively clean, so parity with any gasoline car soars toward unattainable numbers like 80 or 90 mpg.

The BMW i3 is far from the lowest-priced electric car on the market, but like all plug-ins, its running cost per mile will be very low against gasoline or diesel cars. At average U.S. electricity prices, it's likely to cost about one-quarter as much to run 100 miles as a 25-mpg gasoline car. But that difference varies quite a lot, because electricity prices per kilowatt-hour cover a much wider range than gasoline or diesel fuel costs--so your cost efficiency may vary.

With a built-in charger capable of up to 7.4 kilowatts (higher even than the 6.6-kW units found in the Nissan Leaf and other cars), the BMW i3 can recharge its battery pack to 80 percent of capacity or more in under 4 hours using BMW's 240-volt Level 2 charging station--and about 20 percent longer using Level 2 stations from other makers. Those stations may require some home electrical work, but no more than what's needed to install an electric stove or clothes drier.

On standard 110-volt household current, a full recharge will take four times or more that long. BMW does not offer an option to charge only to 80 percent of capacity, however, as Tesla and Nissan do; the company said it wanted to reduce complexity for its customers. The i3 will also offer a DC quick-charging port compatible with the new Combined Charging Standard (CCS) protocol--although today there are very few stations using that standard.