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The BMW i3 (the tiny hatch one, to be clear, not the upcoming sedan) wasn’t a blockbuster success, especially not in North America, where cars the size of bathtubs aren’t very popular. But it was a very nifty vehicle, with a monocoque made of carbon fiber—totally unheard of for a normal car back in 2014 when it was new, and still rare even today. Then again, maybe it would’ve been more of a hit if it had a pickup bed.
Lockheed engineer-turned-YouTuber Michael Pick wanted a cheap electric truck for himself, so rather than wait for the Slate’s eventual launch, he picked up a ratty i3 from auction, sight unseen, and got to work hacking off the rear end and replacing it with open-air cargo space.
Unsurprisingly, this proved to be a very complex project. A steel frame marries the new bed with the rest of the car. The bed itself is made of plywood, sealed with epoxy and then finished off with bedliner. Because this is an i3 REX—the model with a gas engine for a range extender located under where the rear seats would normally be but no longer are—the bed had to be removable, so the engine could be serviced. A generous helping of waterproofing sealant is applied to every seam, while the parts of the original monocoque cut away also needed to be covered in epoxy, because unfinished carbon fiber is vulnerable.
Gas Prices Are Insane, So I Built My Own Electric Truck
Despite the highly unique nature of this project, a lot of the original i3 was preserved, mostly because BMW’s electronics required it, and trying to hack the car’s firmware to not freak out over missing locks, taillights, and data connections was going to be more annoying and tedious than simply making space for all of those things.
For all of the custom fabrication involved, Michael’s little pickup looks clean and durable. Plus, it was cheap—the builder set a goal of doing this entire project for under $10,000, and he passed with flying colors, comfortably a couple grand under the cap. It’s even more impressive when you consider that many of the items he spent good money on ended up being relatively minor things, like a new head unit with a bigger display and a fresh windshield, to replace the cracked one the car came with.
Michael Pick via YouTube
Is this i3 truck perfect or refined enough for most people? Probably not, but I promise you it has more standard equipment than the Slate will ever have, despite costing almost half the price. And hey, that counts for a lot.
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Backed by a decade of covering cars and consumer tech, Adam Ismail is a Senior Editor at The Drive, focused on curating and producing the site’s slate of daily stories.
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