I sold my bmw after 15 years of multiple bmws because their design is so poor for maintenance. I had cooling system problems that required hours of labor to get to just to replace a plastic part that cost $5 where an aluminum one would cost $7.
It seems to me that bmw was designing for best case scenarios where everything goes perfectly. And since it’s supposed to go perfectly who cares if it’s $5000 to fix because it will “never break.”
Reminds me of Rube Goldberg software designs where 9 things have to happen in sequence for success.
The idea of rubust design that assumes everything breaks and you can still operate is one I value. I look for car companies (and everything I suppose) following this principle.
I think they are optimized for the EU leasing market. 4 years, 120.000km. If you buy one for long ownership and want more out of them (they can most certainly do 400=500k km reliably), you have to take care of them from day 1. You change the maitainance schedule (which by default is set to lowering fleet lease costs and who cares beyond that), learn about and do preventive maintainance (such as replacing the entire cooling around 120k km), stricktly use BMW oil (for the additives) unless you are realy knowledgeable about it, and invest in a decent fault scanner (to lnow what is going on and not just run up expensive maintainance bills at the BMW shop).
If you think that's all too much hassle, just lease them short term or buy something else.
It's at 100k miles and there's no user-facing documentation for the procedure, as the oil lasts "for the lifetime of the vehicle".
Turns out, this particular procedure is simple.
(Other common wear items, like the suspension damper boots, or the engine mount, or the AC compressor, or a set of tires every 12000 miles ... it adds up.
The i3 was a cheap acquisition. Doesn't drive like a BMW, but apparently it wears like one.)
The REx models use an engine design based on one of BMW's motorcycle engines; as such, I'm pretty sure that it's not a diesel. The gas tank is only about two gallons; to qualify for EV tax credits in some markets, the battery capacity needed to exceed the energy available from fossil fuel.
That battery capacity for initial models is woeful by today's standards. The design started with 17 kWh, upgraded batteries in later model years doubled that figure. Mine is a degraded original with about 12 kWh available. Freezing temperatures can cut that by half.
I drive it like grandma and get more than 4 miles per kWh. But it was less $$ than a golf cart. (I learned about EV tire expenses after purchase.)