Is BMW i3 Electric Car Selling Better In U.S. Than Germany?

One of the notable features of last year's electric-car sales was the strong, and so far sustained, sales of the radical new BMW i3 electric car.

The little plastic-bodied battery-electric vehicle from Munich, with its odd coach doors and its rear electric motor, sold more than 1,000 cars a month in four of the eight months last year it was on sale.

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The total of 6,024 i3s delivered put BMW's first electric car in sixth place among the 21 plug-in vehicles on sale in the U.S.

Among battery-electrics, it won third place, after only the Nissan Leaf and Tesla Model S--despite being sold for only two-thirds of 2014.

But despite a rumored target of 5,000 deliveries in its homeland of Germany, only 2,128 i3s found homes there during all of calendar 2014.

A report last autumn indicated that BMW planned to boost incentives on the i3 in Germany, with only 1,900 sold during the first nine months of the year.

For perspective, 16.4 million vehicles were delivered in the U.S. last year--against 3.0 million in Germany.

So the BMW i3 represented twice as high a proportion of overall sales in Germany (0.071 percent) as in the U.S. (0.037 percent).

ALSO SEE: BMW i3 Sales Slow In Germany; Will They Hold Up In States? (Nov 2014)

Still, the question remains: Is the BMW i3 underachieving in Germany--and, if so, why?

The enthusiast site BMWblog took a crack at answering that question three weeks ago