i3 on Consumer Reports "The Worst of the Worst Used Cars"

http://www.consumerreports.org/used-car-buying/used-cars-to-avoid-buying/

As luck would have it, I've owned two cars on the list...

Cliff's notes: avoid all cars forever.

Well the i3's not the lone electric on the list. They also recommend against buying the model S and Nissan LEAF. It's a pretty long list of cars to avoid...

Would be curious why the 2014 yet not the 2015. They're exactly the same car. Perhaps just not enough 2015s to evaluate?

johnnylingo said:

Would be curious why the 2014 yet not the 2015. They're exactly the same car. Perhaps just not enough 2015s to evaluate?

Click to expand...

Most leases are at least 24-months, so it's unlikely there will be any significant amount of 2015's available as used vehicles. That will change next year which may take another hit as the 2017's will have larger battery packs.

Depreciation is kind of irrelevant if you keep your car awhile as they all level off eventually. It is important if you must have a new car every couple of years. Given so little on the i3 that should break or rust, or wear out for a very long time, I expect to keep mine for quite awhile.

Unless you are driving a Honda or a Toyota, Consumer Reports will essentially call you stupid for buying what you bought. They are so up the asses of those manufacturers, I don't know how people even read the magazine anymore.

I don't have a massive problem with them calling our car the worst of the worst in terms of used car purchases-- questions of battery maintenance (probably not a big issue with the i3 but it was a massive issue with 1st gen leafs), mult firmware updates (which are similar sounding to recalls) and the first iteration of a new vehicle all likely factor into their opinion. While I've been thrilled with my i3, there clearly have been a few lemons in the bunch as well. They don't have an early adopter mentality at consumer reports (which means they and their disciples miss out on a lot).

The modern car is highly software controlled. How often is your windows or Apple or Android device updated to provide new features or fix bugs? Why is it so strange that a new car doesn't have similar updates? Older ones had decades of incremental changes to rely on...this one IS new, but obviously, some of the logic is reusable from other models. If you understand tech, you'd realize that NO software is totally bug free, and you'll not have an idea how the user interface will be received by users with various levels of education and experience. To make the car 'better' in the short term, it's relatively easy to update the software. Eventually, this might be able to be done OTA (as Tesla does now - does anyone complain about their frequent updates?), but it is riskier, since if there's a glitch, it could put the car into an unusable state. Remember those warnings on your PC about not to turn the power off? Things are much more controlled at the dealership, and if there's a glitch, someone who is trained to resolve it rather than stranding you at home or where ever the car was at the time.