BMW’s new i3 has a rather interesting function available (as a $1,000 optional extra) that will make most people’s lives easier, especially in big, crowded cities: Parking Assistant. Since the car was developed for big cities and parallel parking is a must inside them, we expected this feature to be standard but hey, we’ll take it even as an optional!
This system allows your car to park itself without your interference. It uses a radar installed in the right side of the car that detects large enough parking spaces when you want it to. After that, all you have to do is stop and keep the parking assist button pressed and the i3 will do everything for you.
That’s what a crew of journalists from Romania did when BMW invited them over in Austria to try out the new electric car from Munich. However, there’s a twist: this time, no driver was inside the car while the operation was done.
The man you’re about to see hopping out of the moving i3 is Vali Porcisteanu, a Romanian rally driver that really knows what he’s doing (so you’d better not try this at home!). He somehow meddled with the control button and made it stick while he left the ‘premises’.
The end result is both quite impressive and funny at the same time, seeing the car do all the work by itself, with no one inside. Is that worth the extra $1,000? We reckon it is.
That means you’d have to pay at least $42,350 for the i3 as the car’s MSRP is $41,350 for the all electric model. You can also go for the i3 REx which has a 650cc scooter engine in the back, recharging the car’s batteries, for $45,200 MSRP but we wouldn’t really recommend that option.
With a government grant that can go as high as $7,500 for electric vehicles, the i3 has a starting price dangerously close to the 3 Series and X1, making a strong proposition to those who use their cars on daily commutes the most.
Fitted with an electric motor making 170 HP and 250 Nm (184 lb-ft) of torque, the i3 has a range of up to 100 miles (160 km) under normal conditions. Being a BMW it’s also pretty fast, doing the 100 km/h (62 mph) sprint in just 7.2 seconds. That’s not what it’s brilliant at but rather what it’s demonstrating in the video below. Check it out!
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