BMW I8 Now Truly Dead

Steph Willems
by Steph Willems

Pour one out for a car you likely didn’t have a hope in hell of affording — and that’s if you even desired one in the first place. Arriving on the market as a plug-in hybrid wonder car in 2014, the scissor-doored coupe found roles in top-grossing flicks and prompted saliva production among underpaid, tech-obsessed writers.

Well, the last i8 has left the factory. How much of an impact did it make?

Sales-wise, not much of one. A niche product if there ever was one, the six-figure i8, joined by a convertible later in life, was a green-tinged plaything of debatable utility. Early reviewers raised an eyebrow when the car’s potent trio of electric motors drained available battery capacity faster than the on-board gasoline generator could keep up.

Still, it was a eye-catching showpiece, signalling to the masses that BMW wasn’t afraid of an electrified future. And the automaker did improve the model’s powertrain partway through its run, adding a drop-top for good measure. The automaker’s electrification effort is still a work in process.

German outlet Bimmerpost reports that the last i8, a blue convertible, rolled out of Leipzig late last week. This event would have occurred back in April, were it not for the production-hampering coronavirus pandemic. The final crop of orders needed to be filled.

While there’s still a handful of new i8s to be added to the sales tally, it likely won’t be much. BMW sold 66 of them in the first quarter of 2020. The model’s best sales year in the U.S. was 2015, when Bimmer sold 2,265 units. Last year saw 1,102 offloaded, a better tally than the two years that came before. Through the end of April, some 175 i8s made it to European customers in 2020.

The i8 was wild, but unattainable for most. A handful of ultra-expensive niche EVs won’t placate EU regulators who’ve made it impossible for any mass-market automaker to have a future in the region without a robust electrification plan. Hence BMW’s upcoming i4 sedan, which dispenses with futuristic, look-at-me styling, and the even more conventional iX3 crossover (among others). Conservative, yes, but more sustainable and cost effective than developing prestige models that barely sell.

[Images: BMW]

Steph Willems
Steph Willems

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  • Varezhka Varezhka on Jun 16, 2020

    Too bad. It was one of the more attractive BMW designs in a long time. Instead we’ll be getting the more conservative and ugly naked mole rat look of the new 4 series/iX...

  • John R John R on Jun 17, 2020

    Meh. Good riddance. Green clout or not the performance never matched the pricing. NSX money for - on a good day - BNW M4 straight line performance is simply not good value no matter how glamorous it might look to enter/exit the vehicle...IF one could manage to do so gracefully. Just get an NSX if you want a go-fast hybrid.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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