Munro’s teardown report of the BMW i3

[Pipino]

To anyone: would love to get my hands on the Munro teardown report of the BMW i3.
I saw an interview with Sandy Munro and he is absolutely lyrical about the way they designed and constructed it.
Willing to pay for it.

 

[REMAIM]

I saw a 10 year anniversary YouTube video by Sandy Munro revisiting the i3. Munro has kept a lot of the parts from the original tear down which are in this video. He is still making the report available so you would be best to contact them for a copy.

 

[Mustrum Ridcully]

He mentions the report in his retrospective YouTube report. I think the report is just $10.00 for a PDF version, and I think he was selling it for many thousands of $$$$$$$$ while the i3 was still in production. Of course, I expect that for those big bucks, you got a few copies printed on expensive glossy paper.

 

[Pipino]

I found a copy of the report online. I was very impressed with the interview he gave and his opinion on the BMW i3 design.
It is indeed a teardown report with very detailed pricing of all the (individual) items, including pictures of the items and where they are located. But It does not reveal too much of the interactions of the components.
The car has been designed from the bottom up with soo many innovative features and come to think of it: it actually has very little issues.
Battery pack design would accommodate a relatively easy swap, but I don’t see much of an aftermarket for that here in the US (CA) unfortunately.

 

[alohart]

The car has been designed from the bottom up with soo many innovative features and come to think of it: it actually has very little issues.

Totally agree, especially considering other EV's that have experienced significant software, battery pack, and other issues. BMW started their i3 development by converting a Mini to an EV in 2009, the Mini E, which they leased to alpha testers. They followed this with the ActiveE in 2012, a BMW 2-series coupe converted to an EV which they leased to beta testers. So BMW didn't rush i3 development and got things mostly right.

Battery pack design would accommodate a relatively easy swap, but I don’t see much of an aftermarket for that here in the US (CA) unfortunately.

The cost of high-quality battery cells that are the right size physically is too high to make aftermarket i3 battery packs affordable which is unfortunate. I doubt that the battery cell price will decrease faster than the value of older i3's, so I'm not confident that a market for 3rd-party battery pack replacements will flourish.

 

[Pipino]

Thanks for background info, very interesting. Looks like they also got some inspiration from the tZero for the rex.
Regarding the battery after market: I think you are correct. When changing to (for example) 4680 cells the electronic controls and temperature regulation need to be changed to, with all kind of knock-on problems like coding and communication. So to keep a swap simple it needs to happen with a similar structure.
For the moment we are happy with the 60 Ah version. Still doing > 60 mi.