Benagami said:
I buy used cars and keep them for 5 to 7 years. I bought a used 2014 REX i3 in September. I bought it because I thought it would be a better car than a Nissan Leaf. Now I'm not so sure. Did I make a mistake?
I usually, but not always, buy used cars and keep them more than 15 years unless they become expensive to maintain or no longer meet my needs.
We bought our 2014 i3 BEV new because no used EV's that met our needs were available in 2014. With its corrosion-free construction and upgradable battery pack, it could be another long-term car for us. Even though our i3 has been reliable, it has had some expensive defective parts replaced under warranty (the KLE which we knew was defective when we bought our i3 and the defective motor mount bolt which has not completely fixed the poor motor mount design in early i3's). Our general 4-year warranty expires in November, 2018, so we will have to decide whether we want to risk keeping our i3 out of warranty because BMW parts and repairs can be very expensive. I'm not aware of another EV that meets our needs as well as an i3, so I don't know what a replacement EV would be other than a used i3. If the prices of used 2017 BEV's drops considerably with the introduction of a longer range 2019 i3 BEV, we might consider replacing our i3 with a used 2017 i3, but the financial cost would likely be prohibitive. We certainly won't buy a very expensive extended warranty, though.
It's a bit early to decide that those of us who have purchased i3's made a mistake. At least, you don't have as much invested in your i3 as we have in ours, so you have less to lose. On the other hand, our simpler BEV model seems to be more reliable than your more complex REx model, so I would feel more nervous had we bought a REx. It's discouraging to read about 2017 REx's suffering the same problems as 2014 REx's which suggests that BMW has been unable to fix these problems after more than 3 years.
The warranties on the earliest 2014 U.S. REx's are beginning to expire as they have already in many markets that have shorter warranties (e.g., many European countries), so I am already looking for accounts of very expensive repairs. So far, I haven't read about very many, but in this U.S.-based forum, we don't read about the experiences of many i3 owners in other markets.