Earlier quoted context omitted.
The biggest failing of the i3, in my opinion, is that it looked stupid. It was cheap and "dorky" looking for no obvious reason. There was nothing that stopped BMW from making it look like any of their other models but they chose to make it weird and different in a way that surely hurt its sales. A real shame, honestly.
The Bolt looked nearly as dorky and they sold plenty of those. Even with the battery recall. I doubt GM made much if any profit though. LG chemicals sure didn't. The Ioniq 5 looks way better than both and of course it is doing numbers as a result. i3 was just expensive, low range, and overall not a competitive EV in the NA market.
Someone pointed out thought - in a scenario where you charge your car nightly like your phone, absolute range (and thus excessively large/heavy battery packs) should not be a main consideration. And one would think that the I3's carbon fiber chassis should need a much smaller battery to equal or surpass the range of a Cybertruck, for example.