The driving position and excellent visibility certainly looks to be like the "pod" type cockpit of the Smart Electric Drive. This is truly advantageous in city driving conditions, where manoeuvring in traffic, or around parking lot concrete median/edges benefits from a relatively high sitting position (much higher than in a Volt or Tesla) and low dashboard. The car looks great IMHO, seen it up close a few times, in various colors and interiors, unusual but sharp.
The battery at ~18 kWh is only 1 kWh larger than that in my Smart ED. This means that in the coldest (-20C) winter conditions when the cabin heater needs to run, both cars will get you a little over 80 km of range, regardless of what the manufacturer claims. That said, 80 km of range is plenty for a little city car like my Smart ED, most people rarely drive over 80 km in a day, and since most families own two cars, as long as one of them is a long range car, no problems.
The performance is pretty good, about 2 seconda faster to 100 km/h compared to the Smart ED, and only the same as the new 2016 Volt from 0-50 km/h. The tires are strange size and thus will have few options when looking for winter or replacement.
Very nice effort by BMW. I myself couldn't imagine paying that price for such little performance/utility. I only paid a bit over $17K for my Smart ED.
The price at almost $60K loaded is close to the price of a used Tesla. Multiple cars have sold via the Tesla CPO program at near that price with full warranty.