Photo: bmw
It’s a known fact that the i8 has a very, very long waiting list. That’s only understandable as BMW said from the beginning that they will build few cars to keep the car’s demand high but it turns out this strategy is hurting sales more than expected.
And it’s only normal too. Who would want to wait for more than a year to receive his/her car? Even if that car is an i8… Nobody! Therefore, BMW is now looking for a solution.
The i8 and the i3 are both put together in the same plant in Leipzig. Demand for both cars is pretty high right now but the company decided to cut down on the production of the i3 to be able to make more i8s in the meantime.
It’s all sound very good right now for i8 enthusiasts, right? The problem is, the additional cars that will be built this way will only reach the US shore towards the end of the year, in October at the earliest so you might want to take all this ‘good news’ with a grain of salt.
Furthermore, it seems like the i3 waiting lines won't be affected too much. BMW expects to sell around 1,000 a month in the US alone but with the dropping fuel prices, things might take a turn for the worse for EVs and plug-in hybrids even though the Germans claim that won't happen.
BMW estimates that this way around 1,000 more i8s will be shipped to the US alone but that still won’t make a huge difference as the demand is pretty high and the waiting lists right now are a year and a half long. With the increase in the allocated numbers, that list should go down to around one year but it’s still a lot. In the meantime, people are paying nearly double the asking price for an i8 just to get one as soon as possible.
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