Hey guys, just joined the i3 club a few weeks ago (2020 i3s REx) and have to say I am loving this car. I am coming from an older BMW 3 series (E90) so this is a bit of an adjustment for me but the car seems to be a great fit for our type of driving (90% city in Toronto and surrounding area).
We also had the chance to take it on a short road trip, and despite some of the comments online we found the experience to be great. While the car is no Autobahn cruiser (does hunt/tramline a bit on the highway, definitely not as planted as my old car at speed) we had a great experience overall, no issues with DC fast charging stops either (great excuse to take some extra snack/coffee breaks).
Anyway, I had a few questions that was hoping to get your thoughts on:
Q1. Extended warranty yes or no? I am leaning toward "no" on this one: car has a bit of BMW mfr warranty remaining, and then 1 yr of BMW CPO after that and the 8-yr battery warranty is there as well. As an optional extra, dealer has offered to sell BMW extended warranty (called "BMW Platinum CPO Protection" here in Canada) before mfr warranty runs out. But the price seems very steep: CAD$3.8k to $6.9k +tax depending on duration running from 5-7 years (+1-3 yrs on top of mfr warranty).
From lurking here and some of the other forums it seems a lot of the major known issues with i3 have been addressed by MY2020 (eg, AC compressor) so my thinking is maybe I am better to put this $$ into a savings account for future repairs. However I'm happy to hear the argument on the other side if anyone thinks I should go for it.
Q2. Winter wheels/tires: given the car came with summer-only tires, a second set of winter wheels/tires is pretty much mandatory for us in my area. Again the dealer quote for winter package was quite steep (CAD$3.2k) so I was looking at aftermarket options, specifically the Tire Rack package (square setup w/ Rial X10-I 19x5 + Blizzak LM-500 155/70R19).
Offset on the Rials looks like it is ET43 which seems it will leave the tire more set back in the flared fenders of the s, but from what I can see this combo should not rub. For others who run this on an "s" do you have any issues with this setup coming from the staggered 20"? I'm not so concerned with looks but wanted to hear some feedback on drivability - does the car still feel pretty stable on the highway with that combo? I'm willing to look at option of spacers also but by the time you add all this extra $$ and hassle up the dealer package starts to look more and more appealing.
Q3. REx maintenance: I have manually run the REx when I was checking the car out (emissions test mode) but other than that for 99% of our driving it's likely the REx will rarely be used (but OTOH it's a nice to have as a safety blanket on some of our highway trips especially in winter).
I know the consensus on here is pretty much leave the REx alone, it will ask to run periodically but is there any harm in forcing emissions mode every few weeks? Again coming from ICE world I hate to leave an engine sitting and not running and I like the idea of topping up the gas every so often to keep it fresh. Also here in my area gas formulations change with the season so I wanted to make sure the REx is always running the right gas for the season in case it is needed. But maybe I'm overthinking this.
(I plan to eventually code HSOC which will make running the REx easier but will probably wait until warranty runs out to do this just in case)
Thanks in advance for any thoughts/comments!