Global Crisis

Source: Jalopnik

A few days ago Jalopnik posted some pictures of an i3 sitting on the side of the road on I-684 in New York and called it "Poor Little i3 Gives up, is Abandoned in NY Suburb". The author makes the assumption that the car broke down and the driver just left it there on the side of the road, near an exit ramp for the tow truck to come and get it. While I find that hard to believe, at the same time there are few other valid explanations.

Evidently a Jalopnik reader was driving by and saw the car sitting there unattended and stopped to take the pictures. This area isn't far from BMW's North American headquarters and it's not uncommon for prototypes and pre-production BMWs to be seen driving around these parts. However it is very uncommon to see one left unattended. These are not production cars and are pretty rare now. There are probably only a dozen or two of them in the entire US at this point and for one to be left sitting on the side of the road unattended it's pretty shocking.

However we don't have the whole story, and likely never will. I don't suspect this is the kind of thing BMW would comment on so I wouldn't even ask. There is no picture of it being towed so there really is no proof that it was actually broken down, other than to say why else would it be sitting there like that.

Maybe the driver needed to make an unscheduled bathroom break in the woods? I guess I'd rather believe that then it broke down and the driver just left it there. I suspect someone at BMW had some explaining to do when they came to work on Monday!

What do you think happened here?