I base this on my experience with the U.S. introduction of another new car and car company: smart. Sure they sold a lot more cars in the first year than the i3, but as far as reports on the forums there were very, very few cars being taken back by the dealer or by smart. None as far as I can recall. There were no widespread issues like with the high voltage cables, the motor mounts, the fuel pressure senders, the whooping tires and of course, the KLEs.
In fact, compared to the i3, the smart forums were boring: nothing ever went wrong with them! There were lots of complaints about the horrible transmission, but none about them breaking. Even though it was a new chassis and power train in an unusual configuration, the dealers seemed to have no problems servicing them or getting parts. There have been many threads posted here of i3 owners having to wait days and even weeks for parts.
Where there is smoke, there is fire and there is a lot of smoke blowing around this issue in here and I do not mean all of the smoke BMW blew up our butts about the i3!
