Sanity check: 2015 i3 Giga, 26k miles, CPO for $20k - decent deal? Also - hi!

BMW i3 Forum

Help Support BMW i3 Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Drivesafe

Member
Joined
Sep 27, 2018
Messages
8
Hi i3 community!

With a change in job situation increasing my commute from 0 to 80 miles per day we decided to look at EV options. Lease returns driving the prices down plus love for BMW in general makes i3 an obvious choice :D

Want to say hi and share my excitement.

So my wish list was like this, in order of priority:
1. Must be REx - 40 miles each way would necessitate charging during work hours (possible, but don't want to rely on it)
2. Can’t have HOV sticker - I want to apply for my own to have access to hov for a couple of years
3. Must have bigger screen
4. Must have harman kardon
5. Nice to have some warranty left
6. Nice to have a lighter color
7. Nice to have adaptive cruise
8. Lower miles are better, but honestly anything below 30k is fine
9. Nice to have sunroof (well, derp, evidently these are really almost non-existent)

So after some searching around and some negotiation, here's what I'm considering getting tomorrow for $20k (+taxes & fees) at a local dealership:

- 2015 i3 REx Giga World
- 26k miles
- Parking Assistance package
- Tech & Driving assist package
- harman/kardon premium sound
- 20" wheels
- Warranty until January 2021 (2.25 years)

It satisfies the wish list perfectly (sans sunroof), price seems pretty decent as well. What do you guys/gals think, good deal?

Here are a couple of pics from the lot where I checked them out (this dealer has a couple of dozen of them in stock, actually) - along with my (mega dirty) z4m :):
jA0XOwd.jpg

yPA3Iip.jpg
 
20K seems high to me, but check websites like edmunds, cars.com, NADA, etc to see what a fair price is in your area. If the dealer has a couple of dozen in stock, I'll bet he wants to deal to move them. That's a lot of i3's in one place.
The other thing is that if it meets your specs perfectly, don't let it get away from you. Good luck!
 
By the way, the bigger screen and adaptive cruise control are included in the same package. Sunroof wasn't available until 2017.
 
Thanks for the responses!

Yeah, I searched around quite a bit, and the comparable ones elsewhere were all more expensive. Pretty sure second half of december might be a better time for amazing deals - but that's still a few months away - so went ahead and got it :).

Also ordered a chargepoint; obd reader and bimmercode app. Chargepoint will arrive on Monday but obd reader should be here tomorrow - so already look forward to playing with this large-sized gadget that also serves as a car :D

A couple of pics:

Boring for y'all, but new and exciting for me:

7nE7qdW.jpg


ooh, such futuristic blue lighting! much amaze!

cjStTsk.jpg
 
Drivesafe said:
Thanks for the responses!

Yeah, I searched around quite a bit, and the comparable ones elsewhere were all more expensive. Pretty sure second half of december might be a better time for amazing deals - but that's still a few months away - so went ahead and got it :).

Also ordered a chargepoint; obd reader and bimmercode app. Chargepoint will arrive on Monday but obd reader should be here tomorrow - so already look forward to playing with this large-sized gadget that also serves as a car :D

This is very similar to ours and it actually started off at BMW of San Rafael. Ours had 12.5k (20k km) on it and was imported in Canada earlier this year. Has all the bells and whistles too but I am not too sure about those blue lights (pretty futuristic) Ours came with the darker interior which I like. I had the dealership here put new tires on it before we bought it.

We just installed our Chargepoint 7.2 KW charger and it works great, took 3 hours for about most of a charge.

I am very interested to hear about your feedback on the bimmercode coding as I want to do a few things to ours.

Enjoy!
 
First time on the firum and 1st post. I just bought one today, too. I already have two Nissan leafs and this is a very different experience already. Looking forward to learning how this car works. I'm loving the, almost, 1 foot driving style and more aggressive regen and the quality is most striking.

I'll need to research this coding thing you are referring to. I used leafspy on my leafs to nosy around. Hope this tool is similar.
 
Slypig said:
I'll need to research this coding thing you are referring to. I used leafspy on my leafs to nosy around. Hope this tool is similar.
"Coding" is a somewhat misleading term for setting the values of various private parameters (i.e., no user interface) that control various behaviors; there is no change to the computer code that controls behaviors.

Unfortunately, nothing like LeafSpy exists for the i3. There is no reason why something similar couldn't be developed. However, doing so would require a considerable effort to decode data packets that flow across various i3 data networks and to develop a smartphone app that would display and possibly modify these data. Hopefully, someone with such skills will develop such an app.
 
@PBNB
Right, as Art correctly clarified "coding" is just changing settings which are not exposed via the iDrive UI.

I got the OBD reader recommended on their site (with a promo code it was $24, so with the app the required gear only cost $50). Just following instructions on their site works well for connecting (turn on airplane mode, then turn on bluetooth). For specific settings you would want to change - googling around yields plenty of very detailed posts :)
 
Back
Top