BMW says the 200 000th example of its i3 electric vehicle has rolled off the assembly line in Leipzig, some seven years after production started.

The milestone car is finished in Fluid Black metallic paint with accents in BMW i Blue. It’s destined for a customer from nearby Saxony in eastern Germany.

The Munich-based firm says its little electric car is “still in continuous high demand”, despite having debuted as long ago as 2013. It is the BMW Group's first fully electrically powered large-scale serial model.

Plant Leipzig (which also makes the 1 and 2 Series) produces the 125 kW i3 and 135 kW i3s on a dedicated production line. Since its launch, the gross energy content of the high-voltage battery has been improved from 22,6 to 42,2 kWh, without its size changing.

The current line-up in South Africa includes both the standard eDrive system in i3 (R721 700) and i3s (R785 300) guise, plus range-extender (REx) variants of each (at R811 000 and R874 600, respectively).

And the i8 plug-in hybrid sportscar? Well, the German company built some 20 500 units of the i8 over around six years, with production ending earlier in 2020.

Original article from Car