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| Some 70 BMW i3s, which used to belong to a car rental company that recently went bankrupt, are parked at a roadside on a mountain in Awol District of Jeju, May 25. Yonhap |
By Ko Dong-hwan
Around 70 BMW electric cars (EVs) are parked in the middle of a forest on Jeju Island, arousing the curiosity of observers.
The photo was taken on May 25 showing a field next to a road on a mountain in Goseong in the Awol District of Jeju City in the northern half of the southern resort island. Most of the i3 compacts were seemingly intact, except for some flat tires.
The cars were left there by a car rental company, according to local reports. After the company went bankrupt in 2020, the cars were all red-tagged for seizure. Unable to operate them any longer, the company temporarily kept them in the secluded nook next to the forest.
From 2016 until 2017, the company bought 200 i3s through a monthly installment plan. The business did not go well and the firm went bankrupt. Financially unable to pay off the remaining loans and taxes, the cars had to be seized.
The company moved the red-tagged cars to several empty public spots across the island, including the roadside on the mountain in Goseong and an idle plot of land in Ara, also in Jeju City.
BMW Korea, according to Yonhap News Agency, received court approval on May 17 to acquire the abandoned cars through a bid.
This is not the first time a car rental firm on the island has done something like this.
Some companies choose to abandon EVs because they are more expensive and take longer to repair than non-electric cars. A person who works at a company that owns 10 i3s said it is financially overwhelming to manage electric rental cars compared to internal combustion engine automobiles. One of the EVs parked in the company's garage, was in need of repairs that were estimated to cost over 50 million won ($44,000), the person said.
Some companies choose not to pick up their repaired EVs because they cannot afford the high costs.
The Jeju Special Self-Governing Provincial Government bans rental firms from selling or dumping their EVs purchased with the help of government subsidies within the first two years since the purchase ― because the subsidies are hefty. For a 2018 i3 model that sold for 60 million won, the government paid almost 17 million won in subsidies.
But, according to Yonhap, no current laws allow the government to take back the subsidies used by rental companies to buy EVs even after the companies go bankrupt and the cars are seized.
Up until the end of 2020, the Jeju government saw over 4,100 EVs purchased on the island, with subsidies running to 58 billion won, Yonhap reported.
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