11 hours Ago By [email protected] (Patrick George)
We talk about a lot of things when as we cover the electric vehicle transition. It’s about climate, energy, infrastructure, manufacturing jobs, the battery supply chain and so much more. But every now and then, it’s good to get away from all that Serious Business® to discuss an electric car that simply kicks some ass.
The BMW i4 M50 is such a car, a truly great example of the genre. Along with the also-excellent i5 and iX , it’s further proof that while not every car company will find ways to thrive in the electrified era, BMW probably has things covered. ( Full Disclosure: BMW loaned me an i4 M50 for a week with a full charge for evaluation purposes.
) What Is It? Its full, legal name is the BMW i4 Gran Coupe, but let’s be real about what this actually is: it’s an all-electric 3 Series. The only major difference between cars with that name and the 4 Series Gran Coupe is the latter’s hatchback body and various minor changes in dimensions that brings. It even rides on the same Cluster Architecture (CLAR) platform as the 3 Series and various other gasoline and hybrid BMWs, just fitted with batteries in the floor.
It’s so good in overall execution that it blows up the idea that a good EV always has to be built on an EV-specific platform—although BMW has that in the super-efficient iX and the upcoming Neue Klasse vehicles . But the Neue Klass is a ways off, and the iX is a big SUV; the i4 is the electric BMW sports sedan you can get right now. It comes in three flavors: the i4 eDrive40, with 335 horsepower, rear-wheel drive and up to 318 miles of range; the dual-motor i4 xDrive40, with 396 hp and up to 287 miles of range; and this car, the range-topping i4 M40, with dual-motor all-wheel drive and 536 hp.
A fourth variant, the entry-level i4 eDrive35, is on the way. Specs and pricing for the eDrive35 have not been announced yet. Aside from the 68.
7-kilowatt-hour battery on the base car, all other i4 variants are powered by an 81-kWh unit. Your chosen wheel size will impact your range. My i4 M50 tester had 20-inch wheels, which yielded as much as 245 miles of range on a full charge; a bit better than the 227-mile EPA estimate.
Granted, that’s not a great figure. But the i4 M50 is the high-performance variant: it’ll do zero to 60 mph in just 3.7 seconds and seems like it can put up an even fight against the gas-powered M3 .
At this point, it’s clear that EVs provide better efficiency and acceleration than gas cars, but I’ll remind everyone that the M3 is not to be trifled with , so I mean that as high praise for the i4 here. Throughout my test, however, the updated Tesla Model 3 Performance was on my mind quite a bit. It's less powerful, but cheaper and—on paper at least—quicker.
I need to put some kind of comparison on my to-do list. What’s Good? I know I should primarily be talking about efficiency and range and technology here. And I will.
But let me get the important thing out of the way first: the i4 M50 is an absolute blast to drive. It’s quick as hell in a straight line, it handles astoundingly well, it has more steering feel than most EVs and it very firmly secures a future for traffic court in the electric era. (Not that I got nailed, but I probably had a few moments where I deserved to.
) I got a bit addicted to the i4 M50’s power early on, keeping it in Sport Mode to get the most out of all 536 hp. It’s also refreshing to drive something that isn’t another electric crossover, like so many other options out there. The lower center of gravity in the i4 keeps things really interesting.
And it somehow never feels as heavy as its 5,000-pound curb weight would suggest. When the novelty of smoking C8 Corvettes on a back road wore off (I’m just kidding—it never did!), I switched to Comfort to get a very straightforward, pleasing and indeed comfortable experience. Like the i5 or any other BMW, that’s the whole point: a car that behaves like a sports car with the practicality of a sedan or SUV.
It also shows that BMW’s overall tech game is very solid. The voice-based controls are excellent and so is route-planning and charger location. The wide panoramic screen is lovely and the interface, while packed with an assortment of complicated features, helps you find what you want with a Google-like search function.
All BMW i4 models, except the base one, have a max DC fast-charging speed of 205 kW. That’s not mind-blowing by 2024’s standards but it’s better than many others. I didn’t have time for a full fast-charging test, but when hooked up to a 250 kW Tesla Supercharger Magic Dock station, my i4 went from about 35% to 80%—adding 100 miles of range—27 minutes.
That was enough time for me to run a couple errands in a nearby shopping center and get back on the road. What’s Not So Good? Interestingly, my biggest beefs with the car weren’t even EV-specific. They were M-car issues.
The seat backs are firm, and the ride is too. You pay a price for all that performance when you drive over potholes and rough roads. Just about every gas-powered M3 or M5 I’ve driven in my career has felt similarly jarring, and that edge may not be for everyone.
Be advised that the back seat is a little tight for both headroom and legroom, especially for an EV—fitting that big battery into a gas-car platform certainly didn't help. The flexibility of the 4 Series' hatch is nice, but for families, it's no wagon or crossover substitute. The 4 Series models are also on a kind of Tesla-esque path now, with fewer buttons and physical controls than previous models.
There’s still a good array of those, especially on the steering wheel, but frustratingly, climate controls are now screen-based. (And yet there are still forward and back buttons on the dash for audio controls..
. why?) At least you do get physical toggles for the air vents, which is a less frustrating interface than the last i5 I drove. Interestingly—and this is less of a criticism and more of an observation—I think the iDrive control knob’s time has come.
Once BMW got the knob really dialed in, it spent years as a superb way to operate various menus and functions on the car; my Mazda 3 has something similar and it works well. But on this i4, I don’t think I used it even once. The voice controls are too good, the touchscreen is too good and the few other physical controls on the dash more than made up for it.
It’s no wonder that BMW seems to be moving on from it. The other physical controls could use some work: When I tossed my wife the keys (which she did not want to give back later) I told her you set it into park by pressing the P button. But there are three different buttons marked P on the center console.
She hit the parking camera switch by mistake and thankfully caught her mistake when she lifted off the brake pedal. That could perhaps use some rethinking, though you'd definitely get used to it as an owner. Perhaps the biggest drawback to the i4 M50 is still the range.
Sure, performance EVs aren’t exactly great at this, and neither are performance gas cars. An AWD M3 gets only 22 mpg on the highway, after all. But my range dropped to 229 miles on a 49-degree chilly fall morning.
If distance is your goal, consider one of the eDrive40 or xDrive40 models. It’s not like those are slow. As expected, electric efficiency wasn’t great, although that certainly has a lot to do with how hard I drove this thing.
I mostly averaged 2.5 to 2.7 miles per kWh.
I’d also say that even in its highest setting, the one-pedal driving setup feels like a bit of an afterthought. Pricing And Verdict Until the eDrive35 arrives, the cheapest 2025 i4 starts at $57,900. An i4 M50 will start at $70,700, and with a load of options—the Driving Assistance Package, Premium Package and Cooling and High-Performance Tire Package—my tester came in at $80,775.
It’s certainly not cheap, and if electric performance is your sole goal, the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N and Tesla Model 3 Performance will get you more of that for less money. I don’t think many people will cross-shop the BMW and the Hyundai, at least. And I do think you get a nicer, more premium and more comfortable experience here than you do with any Tesla Model 3.
It’s a lovely, fast, high-tech and high-performance sport sedan, exactly what BMW made its bones on and continues to do today. The i4 M50 feels more designed to convince the BMW faithful to consider an electric car than to bring in total newcomers to the storied German brand. But that shouldn’t be the case; the i4 is seriously good at what it does and it deserves more attention than it seems to get in wider conversations about the EV space right now.
And the i4 M50 doesn’t just prove that we have great things to expect from BMW in the electric era; it proves that those great things are here right now. Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.
com.
