Talk:BMW i3

Who wrote all the Ah battery ?
Why does this article keep using the stupid Ah battery expression when kw is clearly the notation used by all manufacturers ? Tesla, Nissan, VW and even BMW uses KW to specify battery size yet this article keep using this stupid Ah capacity notation. Ah means nothing with out voltage numbers....KW is the international recognized unit for battery capacity when it comes to cars. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.210.183.101 (talk) 00:56, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Video of vehicle?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvGmE5UsIWc — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.209.227.3 (talk) 17:14, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I added the video to the External links section. Thanks.--Mariordo (talk) 02:42, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Transmission - Automatic, single speed
How single speed transmission can be automatic? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.75.144.46 (talk) 14:32, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Split Project i section
Project i has worked on many concepts and cars besides the i3. The i8 is a production car that came out of Project i, for example. The alternative is to merge in to the BMW i article, although these are technically distinct topics, as BMW i is a brand for production vehicles. Should we split this out? If so, should we create a new article of merge with BMW i? -wʃʃʍ- 19:04, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose creation of a new article, I do not think there is enough content, nor the topic is notable enough outside of the context of BMW i. Only the section's first paragraph deals exclusively with Project i. Instead, I support moving the content about project i to a new section in the BMW i, explaining the concept behind the creation of the BMW i sub brand. However, I think there is enough content in the section that I would keep as background/history section to the BMW i3.--Mariordo (talk) 19:53, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Despite low participation, I decided to proceed with the split as proposed above.--Mariordo (talk) 19:49, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Global Sales section
It seems to me that not all of the countries that sell the i3 are listed in the table. While not official, I maintain a volunteer map (http://www.scottlawrencelawson.com/passions/technology/bmw-i3-map) of i3 owners that lists 37 countries where the i3 is located. How can this table be updated to reflect all sales? Scottlawrencelawson (talk) 04:44, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi Scottlawrencelawson. As the table heading explains, only the top selling countries are reported. The hidden text explains, only countries with over 100 units sold are listed, but in the future this limit might br raised, because as an encyclopedic article, the objective is to show only top selling countries, not all countries. Also you have to consider that sales figures are not available for all countries where the i3 is sold. It would be OK to mention how many countries the i3 is sold, but the figure has to be associated to a date, as of ..., and supported by a reliable source. Your website does not classifies as a WP:RS (and by the way, I noted is missing Brazil). Cheers.Mariordo (talk) 09:20, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Possible GA?
This looks like a well sourced and comprehensive article. Are there any editors who may want to push this to good article status? sst✈ 12:52, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi sst✈. As the lead author of the article I appreciate your suggestion. Since I have already push several articles to GA, I am quite aware of the effort and time that takes to attend to the GA revision. In the three upcoming weeks I will not have much time for such effort, but I am willing to contribute to attend the revision recommendations if somebody else participates in the process. Cheers.--Mariordo (talk) 03:26, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

New battery and CCS is standard
The i3 will get a new battery and previously gained the CCS port as standard in the United States. Does anyone know if it is standard globally? I can't imagine it is optional anywhere in the world.

The new range should be roughly 105 miles on a full charge, on the EPA cycle, using my own calculations. This should be very close to the new Nissan Leaf. Zagadka314 (talk) 14:17, 24 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Content related to the new battery was included. Thx for the tip.--Mariordo (talk) 03:09, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

3rd top selling electric car (end of 2015) ??
In a couple places it says "As of November 2015, the i3 ranked as the world's third best selling all-electric car in history."

I propose to change this to fourth.

As of end of 2015, the Leaf has sold 200K, and the Tesla & Volt have sold 100K, and the i3 has sold ~50K. The issue appears to be the Volt. In some places in the Volt article is says 50K, but note that that is just up to 2013. The Volt has sold 100K.

http://cleantechnica.com/2015/11/06/chevy-volt-crosses-100000-sales-milestone/


 * The article clearly states the i3 is the third best selling all-electric car, or battery electric car. The Volt is a plug-in hybrid, not a pure electric car. Also, if you take a look, I am finishing updating the Volt article, but cum sales are already updated, ~106,000 by the end of December 2015. The Mitsubishi Outlander P-HEV (~92K), the Toyota Prius PHV (~75K) and the BYD Qin (~42K) are all also ahead of the i3, but as the Volt, these are PHEVs. See the complete rankings of BEVs and PHEVs with sales updated through Dec 2015 here. The i3 is indeed the 3rd ranked BEV.--Mariordo (talk) 15:28, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified
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I have just modified 10 external links on BMW i3. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20151007000742/http://www.bmw.ie/ie/en/newvehicles/i/i3/2013/showroom/technical_data.html to http://www.bmw.ie/ie/en/newvehicles/i/i3/2013/showroom/technical_data.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130921015553/http://www.bmw.co.uk/en/new-vehicles/bmw-i/i3/2013/charging.html to http://www.bmw.co.uk/en/new-vehicles/bmw-i/i3/2013/charging.html
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.compositesworld.com/articles/bmw-leipzig-the-epicenter-of-i3-production-
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150205045459/http://www.kba.de/DE/Presse/Presseportal/N_Segmente_Modellreihen_FZ11/N_Segmente2014/n_seg_12_14_pdf.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=2 to http://www.kba.de/DE/Presse/Presseportal/N_Segmente_Modellreihen_FZ11/N_Segmente2014/n_seg_12_14_pdf.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=2
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20140102192437/http://www.elbil.no/elbiler/1186-7882-nye-elbiler-registrert-i-2013 to http://www.elbil.no/elbiler/1186-7882-nye-elbiler-registrert-i-2013
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20140625223703/http://raivereniging.nl/artikel/marktinformatie/actuele-verkoopcijfers/verkoopstatistieken.html to http://www.raivereniging.nl/artikel/marktinformatie/actuele-verkoopcijfers/verkoopstatistieken.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20140625223703/http://raivereniging.nl/artikel/marktinformatie/actuele-verkoopcijfers/verkoopstatistieken.html to http://www.raivereniging.nl/artikel/marktinformatie/actuele-verkoopcijfers/verkoopstatistieken.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130508044311/http://www.bilimp.dk/statistics/index.asp to http://www.bilimp.dk/statistics/index.asp
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130910103548/http://www.bmw.co.uk/en/new-vehicles/bmw-i/i3/2013/start.html to http://www.bmw.co.uk/en/new-vehicles/bmw-i/i3/2013/start.html

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Blatant grammar error in lede
How embarrassing that the lede for the article of a well-known BWM contains such a childish and incompetent "its/it's" grammatical error.

75.68.35.78 (talk) 20:44, 9 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Thank you for pointing that out. I fixed it. And actually, this article doesn't appear to be protected so you could have fixed it, too. See Be bold. Thanks, Bahooka (talk) 23:48, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Invitation to participate in a discussion
This is to invite regular editors of this page to participate in the ongoing discussion at the talk page of the electric car article regarding Wikipedia policy about pricing info included in several articles dealing with plug-in electric cars. You are welcome to express your view. Cheers.--Mariordo (talk) 13:52, 29 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Regardless of whether this article is over or under the 10,000 word rule of thumb at WP:LENGTH, BMW i3 is too damn long. It's bloated with content that violates WP:NOTCATALOG and WP:NOPRICES. Put another way, it needs to be WP:GLOBALIZEd: instead of detailing the trivial facts of the street price of the car in a bunch of local markets, the availability and performance of the car should be summarized in a global way. It's excessive and against policy to say the car costs US$42,275 in the US and €34,950 in Germany. Instead we should say "the i3 sells for about the same as the average cost of a new car, though about 70% more than the price of an average subcompact." Will car buyers find this vagueness frustrating? YES! But Wikipedia is not a price comparison service. We have to adhere to that policy.The same goes for much of the other excessive detail in this article, and the redundancy in much of the article. How can an article about a car with minuscule sales, built for only the last 4 years, be the same length as Ford Model T, a car of monumental historical importance that was in production for 21 years?! One reason: Ford Model T doesn't try to explain how an internal combustion engine works, or how an assembly line works. It mentions these things, it says the Model T has this displacement, that kind of valves, a magneto, etc. But if you don't know how a magneto works, you go read Ignition magneto. That's not included in Ford Model T. We have other articles that explain how government electric car rebates and incentives work, and other articles that explain how electric car batteries are charged. Doesn't belong here. BMW i3 should be half as long as Ford Model T or Jeep CJ.This EV bloat has to stop. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 22:01, 4 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I will address your other issues once I finished updating the table. You said the "BMW i3 is too damn long. It's bloated" As per WP:TOOBIG, the current size, even with the few material I recovered, is just 23 kB (3899 words) of readable prose size, well beneath the limit of <40 kB established to justify division or removal of excess material (The Model T article is 23 kB (3909 words) but back then there was not so much stats and other relevant info available as it is today). But to begin the discussion with and to allow other editors to participate in the discussion, please point out where in the sales table you removed there are retail prices ? or elsewhere in the article that is not in compliance with WP policy. Once more time you are ignoring the part of WP:NOTCATALOG that I transcribed as follows in bold: An article should not include product pricing or availability information unless there is an independent source and a justified reason for the mention. Encyclopedic significance may be indicated if mainstream media sources (not just product reviews) provide commentary on these details instead of just passing mention...
 * (i) All content is supported by reliable sources, as requested by WP policy (no single source or catalog, nor this is useful pricing for shopping). As required, there is encyclopedic significance because these sources are raising the issues of barriers to adoption, pricing is one (see next bullet) and sales volumes, as a measure of market penetration of any new technology, no matter if it is a success or a failure, this is how you measure it.
 * (ii) Even though there is no pricing in the sales table you removed (I am Ok with removing the country section, that was too much I agree), as a general principle pricing is a key issue in all green car technologies, because there is a premium you pay for the new technologies in the early phases of adoption (just remember the price of PCs and cell phones). So hybrids are more expensive than ICE-powered vehicles; plug-in electric cars are even more expensive, because of the battery (critical for all-electrics because the battery is bigger); and hydrogen vehicless are way up more expensive. So for example why is relevant/notable to show the initial pricing in key countries (the main markets as per sales stats)? Because the purchase price premium is mitigated by subsidies in the U.S. and UK, but not in Germany, so it was expected a lower intake (which actually happened until Germany put in place subsidies in 2016). So this content is about public policy and market penetration, just like the Model T succeeded only when prices went down thanks to significant improvements in production (introduction of assembly line production).
 * (iii) The existence of public policies, more specifically, of direct purchase subsidies or tax credits or tax exemptions is a reflection of the concern of more than a couple dozen governments around the world for this price premium, and these temporary policies were issued as a financial incentives to promote the adoption of specific green cars in their countries. So the relevance of pricing/sales volumes stats is justified in this article, and all others related, by no means is marketing.
 * (iv) There are plenty of Wikipedia articles dealing with stats about sales, perfectly within the limits of Wikipedia policy, you are just objecting the ones related with plug-in electric vehicles. Just some examples, the list is huge:


 * Ford Model T: see the section about price and production (it indeed shows annual pricing from 1909 to 1927)
 * List of best-selling automobiles
 * List of automobile sales by model
 * List of best-selling books
 * Motor vehicle, plenty of sales and production figures here
 * Tourism, plenty of stats here too
 * Smartphone, plenty of sales and market share figures near the end of the article
 * Personal computer, with sections about sales and average sales pricing

I suggest we begin the discussion with this two issues: (i) size and (ii) the presentation of relevant sales figures and prices as per my arguments above. Cheers.--Mariordo (talk) 23:00, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
 * You're totally ignoring the conditions that prices are included in exceptional cases. We only focus on the details of prices (or any of this other shopping guide data) when our sources have given reasons why *this case* is exceptional. The Ford Model T is exceptional because of the years-long historic trend it caused when it was introduced at a high price and due to the exceptional effects of mass production that hadn't yet been applied on that scale, the price steadily fell and the market changed in direct proportion to the changes in price. That is why it is exceptional, and we ourselves didn't make that up. It's copiously sourced. Many secondary sources agree; it's a well-recognized case.Every single electric car cannot be so exceptional. You have obviously decided to fill every single EV article with as much specific detail as you can about street prices in each market, dollar values of government incentives, exact prices of gasoline, exact electricity rates, production and replacement costs of batteries. Exact numbers of EVs sold in every market.Don't sit here and try to fool anyone into thinking you did this because sources convinced you that the i3 is exceptional enough to warrant it, and the Leaf is exceptional enough to warrant it, and all the Teslas and the Mitsubishi i is also exceptional, and the Chevrolet Bolt and Volt and Spark AND the EV1, and the Prius too, and on and on and on. Every single one? That is a sham. If you can't be honest I don't see the point in trying to reach a consensus with you. When we have discussed this exact same topic among a dozen or more other editors, there was never any question that prices, sales, shopping, etc, were not included in all cases, only in special cases. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 16:57, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Dennis, not all plug-in car models will survive, as it happens back in the early 1900 (among those not making it were all-electric cars, which were at some point, the majority of horseless carriages!). But more to the point, Tesla is a good example. The Model S is a luxury car, priced between $70K and $100K, and has sold just over 200K since 2012, but look at the 500K reservations for the Model 3, priced at about 30K after the federal tax credit, why, because of Tesla's cars reputation and the Model 3 is affordable for the middle class, price matters. And nobody is sure Tesla will survive! The Fisker Karma already went belly, others were discontinued. You have to consider that plug-ins are at the early stage of adoption, and as such, the panorama is evolving constantly, so a lot of content in EV articles gets dated, and with several editors adding pieces, some articles get disorganized, duplicated content, and with excess details. After seven years of the introduction of series production EVs is about time to do a rational trimming - not brute chopping (as an example I am trying to trim the main PEV article - It will take some time to finish, which by the way, already had several splits, just as electric car use by country). But within context, pricing info following WP guidelines is relevant now. In response to your argument about "every single car", if you look at all the articles and sections about PEV models (there are more than a hundred plug-in models worldwide, and just 41 in the U.S.), only the most notable (top selling usually) are the ones with more content about sales stats, right in accordance with WP:Notability, and in addition to sales volume, it is the press coverage is what determines what is notable. The top 12 by cum sales volume are precisely the Leaf, Model S, Volt, Outlander PHEV, Prius PHV/Prime, BMW i3, Zoe, BYD Qin, BAIC EC-Series, Model X and Fusion Energi. And please notice that the BAIC EC180 does not even have an article, because it became notable by WP standars only in the last quarter of 2017, by breaking the monthly sales volume of any plug-in car (+ 15K in november), becoming the top selling new energy car in China, and also the world's 2017 best selling plug-in car and surpassing the Model S. So, when that article gets created, these stats should be there, this is why the car is notable for (as per published reliable sources, not based on my opinion). And by the way, the excess baggage in this article has already been removed (country sections with pricing by country), and duplicated sales stats were removed (I did that today), so I think there is more balance in the BMW i3 article now, but if you think otherwise, please let's focus on this article and please point which specific content you do think does not merit to be here (please no more talking about all EV articles in general, let's focus the discussion on this article). Notability depends on context, I believe the i3 is notable because BMW decision to design and built an electric car from zero, and also deserves to have sales stats because it is the all-time third best selling electric car (that might change in the future of course or BMW might decided to halt production as sales have not been what the carmaker initially expected, we simple do not know). --Mariordo (talk) 03:35, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Dennis, I just finished updating the sales figures through December 2017, including restoring the sales table by country. The article is has now a prose size (text only) of 22 kB (3735 words) of "readable prose size" - actually a bit less of the initial size before this update (23 kB with 3899 words) - As you noticed I did some ce, removed dated and duplicated content, which illustrates how this section can evolve in the near future. For example, sales of the i3 are about to reach the 100,000 unit milestone, so the previous mark (65K) can be substituted, and so on. Only prices at launch for three of the top markets are shown, two of them had subsidies, Germany did not (after subsidies were set last year, sales took off in the German market), as a reference for initial pricing to compare with future pricing (much lower? higher? end of subsidies would affect sales volume?). So, I ask you to please take another look at this section, of this specific article, and tell us what content you think should not be included in the article, or that should improve the article, but please, no more general complaints about EV articles, this discussion refers only to the BMW i3. Cheers.--Mariordo (talk) 04:30, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I still think it looks like BMW brochure, uses a salesman-like tone and language, and is structured like a shopping guide/price comparison service. On the other hand, this article has improved and is far from the worst of the EV-related articles. It's probably a higher priority to address other articles, and to have an RfC that deals with the excessive prices and comparisons across many articles, rather than piecemeal. I'll tag or fix specific issues as needed but if you wish to move on from here that's fine from now. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 22:02, 14 February 2018 (UTC)