The BMW i3 would have been an oddball no matter what company built it, but it’s at least twice as strange thanks to the BMW badge on the hood. The German luxury car company hadn’t built anything that strange since the Isetta microcar back in the 1950s. But the carbon fiber, sustainable interior, and bicycle tire-clad i3 city car brought at least one innovation with it that BMW is planning to use again. That’s a range-extender drivetrain. A gas engine designed to be used solely as a generator to make electricity when the battery has run flat. This time, it’s going to be used on the much more mainstream X5 crossover.
Â
