MEET THE ELECTRIC BMW M3
And you thought an auto box and a bit of rhinoplasty was controversial...
Here’s another inflection point for EVs. The BMW i4. Full electric drive has now reached “the heart of BMW”, says company boss Oliver Zipse.
It’s not a city car. Not a crossover. Not a start-up – hello Tesla 3 and Polestar 2. It’s a proper sports saloon from the premium aristocracy.
The choice of powertrains will top out at an M Performance version, with RWD, 523bhp and a 0–62mph time, says BMW, of four seconds – a nose ahead of the M3. Range will go up to about 360 miles WLTP.
Most of the i4’s styling is shared with the coming 4-Series Gran Coupe. Except of course it gets efficiency-stretching aero tweaks. Inside, though, things are very different. It gets the new iDrive version eight, as just revealed for the iX crossover.
Well now. Given the car’s layout, and the team who developed and is making it, we might reasonably assume that this will be the best electric car to drive this side of a Porsche Taycan.
It’s a busy year for electric BMWs, as the company is also launching the iX crossover. It’s confident that buyers are hungry. Zipse explains that it was “an easy decision” to bring out the i4 three months ahead of schedule – it goes on sale in Germany this autumn.
Given how much it shares with the 4-Series, it’s also built on the same production line at the company’s Munich factory. That plant has special significance as it’s right at the foot of the company’s headquarters tower. The heart of BMW, then.