While pulling onto the road my car started pulling strongly towards the left and was very hard to steer. it had very heavy difficult steering. it felt absolutely different than anything i've felt in the two years of ownership. i pulled into a parking lot and 'googled' i3 difficult steering and came across multiple forum posts and discussion of this issue. it appears the i3 power steering can randomly stop working and then returns with an ignition cycle. i locked the car, went in a store for 5 minutes, and normal steering resumed when i drove away. one becomes used to the way their car drives when they drive it every day. when all of a sudden the steering changes drastically it seems it can be an alarming and potentially dangerous situation.
Temporary loss of power assist. from a stop, the assist will function correctly until 30mph. from then on, there will be no power assist until coming to a full stop. the pattern repeats itself for the remainder of the trip. once the vehicle is turned off, it could take days or months for this to happen again. bmw states they "can not reproduce". this situation makes the vehicle very unstable and dangerous.
I was driving the car and the steering suddenly became heavy - no longer self-centering. the car would still go where i pointed it, but the wheel wouldn't return to center like usual. it felt very stiff. after shutting the car off for a few minutes, it returned to normal.