First came the EVs that looked very obviously like electric cars, with wacky designs showing off their futuristic powertrains. Then there was a generation that hid EV powertrains under bodywork shared with combustion-powered models. And now we are encountering a new strain, EVs that look almost identical to regular siblings but sit on radically different underpinnings. And the BMW i3 is the best example yet of this new genre. From the outside, it looks almost indistinguishable from the gasoline-powered G50 3-series, but every exterior panel is different, and it sits on a completely different architecture, BMW’s Neue Klasse EV platform. The distinction is great enough that it even gets its own BMW model code—this is the NA0.

The Lowdown

The Neue Klasse underpinnings mean the i3 shares its powertrain with the iX3 SUV that was launched ahead of it.…