I agree that there is another side to the story, but I don't accept BMW's corporate line that this was "the most sustainably responsible means of handling the cars." BMW intiailly set this small production run as a prototype, and by US rules, the prototype can be run on US roads for a limited time and then the prototypes destroyed (or rendered undriveable so they can be displayed). There are a couple of concerns with this initial decision, but to create a production of more than 1000 cars, it would not have been difficult to certify these for crash safety or ask for an exemption. This would have allowed the continued use these cars. Obviously BMW's first decision was open to queston, in creating an extremely large prototype series. Most non-certifiable prototypes are extremely small series of cars, usually under a dozen. To make 1100 cars certainly required tens of millions of dollars, I believe they should have made the initial decision to certify this small run. Whether they sold them, gave them to schools, or properly scrapped at the end of the test would be another decision.
My bigger concern is how they were disposed of. Information appears to say that the cars were simply scrapped, crushed and sold as mixed scrap metal. These cars have a significant number of aluminum components and some titanium alloy components. Colleges and high schools with auto shops could have learned a lot by simply disassembling and separating the parts by metal, and recycling the expensive metals. Mixed metal crushing is most certainly not "the most sustainably responsible means of handling the cars."
