BMW has extended the warranty for the battery of the i3. With immediate effect, the Munich-based carmaker is increasing the maximum mileage in Europe associated with the eight-year warranty period from the previous 100,000 to now 160,000 kilometres.

This was announced in a press release from the German manufacturer, in which some of the first customers who have meanwhile completed more than 200,000 kilometres each with their BMW i3 report on their experiences. As BMW already emphasized in December, the production of the electric car is to be extended until 2024. However, there will be no successor after that year.

The fact that BMW is not planning a direct successor was already leaked in September. At that time, however, it sounded like a much shorter production end, which is why BMW boss Oliver Zipse contradicted the rumours in October and called the car an icon. Over the years, with the increasing range and better distribution of charging points, sales figures for the i3 have also risen steadily. Around 165,000 units of the compact electric car have been sold worldwide since the start of production in Leipzig in 2013, according to BMW headquarters.

In connection with the extended warranty for the battery, the Bavarians now say that “customer experience shows that even after long mileage, the range achievable with the original battery only decreases insignificantly. Until now, no high-voltage battery of a BMW i3 has had to be replaced due to premature aging”. Since the potential of the battery is far from exhausted after the 100,000 kilometres estimated to date, the warranty commitments for the battery in new BMW i3 vehicles in Europe have now been extended once again.

The German car and motorbike maker gave the BMW i3 and the sports offshoot i3s a further battery upgrade in September 2018: by using new Samsung cells with 120 Ah, the total capacity increased by almost 30 per cent to 42.2 kWh. At the market launch in 2013, the values were still 60 Ah and 22.6 kWh. The first battery update followed in 2016 with 94 Ah and 33 kWh. According to BMW, the switch to 120 Ah cells has increased the range according to WLTP measurements to 285 to 310 kilometres or 260 km in everyday operation. This corresponds to an increase of around 50 per cent compared to the BMW i3 with a first-generation high-voltage storage system. Incidentally, another battery update is still pending for the i3, as BMW announced in the course of extending production until 2024.

Interestingly, the maximum warranty for battery use in the USA had already stood at the 160,000 km (100,000 miles) that Europe has now been upgraded to. Whether this is due to American roads generally being more straight than the older, curving European roads or better technologies or measurement cycles being used is not entirely clear.

press.bmwgroup.com, insideevs.com