[eelnoraa]

I am a 45e owner. it is my family car, and I am not emotionally attached to the car at all. It has strength, but isn't all rainbow either, just like anything else. The primary deciding factor is if you have a consistent mean to charge the car. That means either home or office, where you will be there for a while for purpose other than charging. If you don't, then PHEV isn't the right car. If you have to go out of your way to charge, it gets old fast and you will end up not charging the car. BMW PHEV will lose most if not all benefit if you operate it as a non plug in hybrid. It certainly won't be as efficient as 40i.

Two biggest benefits to us is:
1 missing the routine gas station stop. The only time we stop for gas is on longer road trip.
2. I can run HVAC with ICE off in close space. Not so much for preconditon, but for fall asleep infant in car

what isn't necessary a benefit is $/mile. This highly depend on your gas price vs. electricity price. If you care, then maybe do some match to confirm. Here in Cali, $/mile is higher with eDrive vs gas by as much as 40%. Even if $/mile is lower, it will take years to recoup the additional cost of PHEV in 2024.

As for relaibility, it really depend on how long you want to keep the car. Short time, I don't think you will see much different between 40i and 50e. Long term, 50e will have things to fix simply because drive chain is more complicated. How much worse is very hard to say. The volume and age of 45e and 50e is enough to make a concrete conclusion for long term reliability