Your official BMW i3 photo gallery

We've seen it so lightly camouflaged that it may as well be a production version, and we've seen official studio shots, but here's your official production BMW i3 city car in the sheetmetal on the road, inside and out, and plugged into a charger. Try to contain yourselves.

To help refresh your memory, the new i3 is the first road-going BMW model to be based around an all-carbon-fiber body. For development, BMW forged a working relationship with SGL Carbon and established a state-of-the-art carbon-fiber weaving and curing facility at its Landshut factory in Germany, where the new car's structure is made.

Power comes from an electric motor mounted low in the rear axle -- a position allowing BMW to devote the space under the hood to improved crashworthiness. The synchronous motor is produced in-house at BMW's Munich engine plant; the company says it weighs just 287 pounds and produces 168 hp. As with all electric cars, the torque is what counts, and the motor's 184 lb-ft is 5 lb-ft more than what the Mini Cooper S' 1.6-liter four-cylinder turbo produces. The i3 is rear-wheel drive with a single-ratio gearbox offering three driving modes: comfort, ECO-PRO and ECO-PRO+.

We'll have a full drive review of the production version shortly; in the meantime enjoy the images, and be sure to read our earlier drive of the BMW i3 in late prototype form.

By Autoweek editors