Video: 2015 BMW i3

You might call it BMW's ultimate head-scratching machine. You come up to the i3 and two things immediately stand out. First of all, it's small, 158 inches bumper to bumper. That's actually shorter than a Honda Fit. Second of all, it's weird. Some traditional BMW cues up front here, but even those seem a little bit odd. You get up to the kidney grills here. It looks BMW, right? But they're actually completely closed off. Now obviously electric cars have different ventilation needs from gasoline cars. Come around the side, the belt line here past the front door just suddenly plunges as it heads toward the rear. And these wheels, 20 inch optional wheels on our test car, but they've got really, really skinny tires. Almost look like bicycle tires. The weird factor continues on the inside of the i3 with shapes and materials you'd kind of expect in sort of an urban home decor catalog, not exactly a car. The instruments amount to this small screen here in the middle of a larger display on the steering column. While the center control screen just kind of hovers out here in the middle of nowhere over what BMW calls sustainably forested eucalyptus wood. Other materials include cloth along the upper doors that actually comes from recycled plastic bottles, according to BMW. The controls here for the transmission actually amount to this sort of big hub that sits on the steering column itself. You actually click it forward or backward to go into drive, neutral, or reverse. Now for what it's worth, the overall layout actually is pretty space efficient. There's basically a giant bin here. This is what it sort of becomes ahead of the center controls. The glove compartment looks like there isn't one. It actually opens up here, deeper than you'd actually think. The transmission, because it sits behind the seats, actually clears up a lot of space here in the center tunnel for your kind of knees and legs to spill out. And the back seat behind those suicide doors to get in, actually is pretty decent for adults to go on short trips. Another thing besides kind of a small rear window, overall visibility pretty good, thanks to this upright profile of the i3. Lots of glass around you. Easy to see out of. Now, the i3 is a fully electric car. A lot like a Nissan Leaf. You charge it all the way up and you get an EPA estimated total range of 81 miles. Now BMW does offer an optional range extender. Turns it into a car that's a little more like a Chevy Volt. In this case, basically it's a two cylinder gasoline engine. It's a motorcycle engine from BMW. It goes in the rear of the car. Turns total range into about 150 miles. Not that you'd want to take it on a lot of road trips. 'Cause the gas tank for it, only about two and a half gallons. And BMW recommends premium fuel. You have to be stopping every 70 miles or so to fill up. Now the i3 actually rides pretty well for what it is over anything short of real choppy pavement. The electrical motor provides instant torque and peppy acceleration around town in the default comfort mode. There's eco pro and eco pro plus modes. Those add a little bit to your remaining range, chiefly by relaxing accelerator pedal response. By the time you get all the way over to eco pro plus, it's actually pretty laggy though. No matter the mode, there's very aggressive regenerative braking. If you get off the gas at all, it feels like the i3 is just aggressively, suddenly slowing down. And if you actually need to slow down more than that, the brakes themselves, they have linear pedal travel, but overall stopping power just doesn't seem all that strong. Now some of that may come from the i3's really skinny tires, which give up their footing really easily. Especially if you really throw the car into a corner, accelerate, or brake over any bumpy pavement. One similarity between the i3 and the rest of BMW is price. Starts out around $43,000. Tops out north of $55,000 before a maximum federal tax credit. So a pretty pricey little car here. Apart from that, not a whole lot of similarities between the i3 and the rest of the brand, from a drivability, packaging, or styling standpoint. Depending on your perspective, that's either a great new move for BMW or maybe a mistake. (upbeat music) (trunk slamming)