Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

I dare any California person to buy a Mazda-MX30!

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.

It's frustrating because Mazda builds good, competitive, well-priced ICE cars that often punch above their price class in driving experience and premium style. I would like to see them put the same effort into EV's. The MX-30 was laughably out of date and uncompetitive before it even launched.
As a note Mazda is still a relatively small manufacturer. It spend a considerable amount of capital in its scalable ICE RWD platform which will be hybrid capable. Not a wise choice in retrospect.
 
This car wasn’t intended to be a moneymaker for Mazda. It’s simply a car created to get EV tax credits, nothing more. 500 units is hardly a bump in any automaker’s annual sales report, even for a small company like Mazda. They most likely LOSE money for each one sold.

Compliance car like the Fiat 500e, Mitsubishi MiEV and so many under-100 mile range cars out there during the early 2010’s. Come to think of it, there already is another car just like this one (suicide rear doors, boxy little body, short range EV) made by a certain German automaker, except that company at least had the decency of putting in a gasoline generator in some trims.
I had an i3 before the M3LR. The i3 had the advantages of actually quick acceleration below 60 mph, rear wheel drive, an excellent interior, carbon fiber lightness, and very nice interior materials plus the range extender. BMW sold over 10,000 in USA in 2015. Most were sold in Europe.

Worldwide, over 220,000 i3 were sold cumulatively, much better than the MX30 will ever do.

Rather decent for a 'compliance car'.
 
I had an i3 before the M3LR. The i3 had the advantages of actually quick acceleration below 60 mph, rear wheel drive, an excellent interior, carbon fiber lightness, and very nice interior materials plus the range extender. BMW sold over 10,000 in USA in 2015. Most were sold in Europe.

Worldwide, over 220,000 i3 were sold cumulatively, much better than the MX30 will ever do.

Rather decent for a 'compliance car'.
@DrChaos Hopefully nobody called the i3 a compliance car. It wasn't, and it was much better than any compliance car.

It was however overpriced and under-batteried, and got wildly outclassed by the Model S. Sure the i3 was a little cheaper, but not enough, the S was a better value despite being more expensive.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DrChaos
i3 succeeded despite bmw's efforts to kill it...

The 'i' division was thinking far ahead in 2011-2012, but it's very likely internal BMW politics prevented it from thriving. They had the right idea once, that there was going to be a profound transformation and they needed to get ahead of it. There was a serious 'i'-division branding effort--you could even see it in the expensive looking manual covers. Wool fabric covered, with a stylized 'i' logo, not the BMW roundel---almost as if they were planning for a spin-off or separate segment IPO for capital infusion, which would have worked well in a tech stock boom.

i3 was effective and capable given the technical limitations on batteries at that time, and the i8 was a stunning design, the best looking car BMW has ever produced. Integrating a ReX is not a small matter.

But EV development was thwarted for years. The i3-i8 designers left the company. There was no followup, and now when there is, it's all on compromised shared platforms. Probably the Dieselkopfs of traditional BMW resented the investment in 'i' and squashed it.

You could even see this fight in the online app. There was an original i-division phone app which was beautiful and innovative, but its development was frozen, and then replaced by a generic BMW corporate app which failed to work properly, mostly because of backend issues, for years.

Basic things like "start charging" or "start climate" failed most of the time. Undoubtedly they were written by entirely separate software teams---very likely the i division hired non-typical-BMW tech programmers who were later canned.

If the management had been more supportive of the i division there would have been a mainstream 4-door car/cuv in significant quantity around the same or before the Tesla model 3 launch, followed by numerous other models. They'd be tied with Tesla in EV thought leadership and sales, far surpassing every other LICE. They'd have the REX market to themselves.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: afty
@DrChaos Hopefully nobody called the i3 a compliance car. It wasn't, and it was much better than any compliance car.

It was however overpriced and under-batteried, and got wildly outclassed by the Model S. Sure the i3 was a little cheaper, but not enough, the S was a better value despite being more expensive.
The i3 was much much cheaper in practice as it had subsidized leases. I bought a used i3 ReX with under 11,000 miles and 2 years old for $24k. S is a much larger and different kind of car. Used prices were $70K-80K.

And in Europe (and for me) the model S is much too large for streets and parking. The i3 is a mainstream size there. I would still want something like that, a hatch smaller than Model Y, more like an Audi A3/A4 wagon.

Anyway, it looks like the next BMW Neue Klasse in 2025 (EV only platform) might be pretty interesting. The current BMW i4 is significantly better than I expected it to be given it's a shared LICE platform. Their motor & electronics engineers have squeezed more efficiency & performance than most other makers other than Tesla and maybe Hyundai.
 
Last edited:
The i3 was much much cheaper in practice as it had subsidized leases. I bought a used i3 ReX with under 11,000 miles and 2 years old for $24k. S is a much larger and different kind of car. Used prices were $70K-80K.
I remember my coworker got some kind of crazy cheap lease deal for the i3 when it first came out around 2015. I think it was like $100 a month.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DrChaos
It was just bad timing. Had the i3 been released in 2020, right when pandemic struck, BMW would’ve sold every single i car AND have a waitlist. There would be no outrageous low priced $99.00 lease deals, no dealer markdowns, no begging for customers. The CEO and i design team would be hailed as heroes, and a whole slew of carbon fiber i-cars would’ve been designed, built, and sold. It probably would’ve spawned off a new i division of cars.

But yeah, that timing. It sucks sometimes.
 

It didn't seem like the US would ever get this version and it's not clear it ever will.
 
Last edited: