It seems that it’s the performance that is consistently impressing the very first journalists and vloggers who were invited to the official BMW i4 launch venue in Germany. Bjørn Nyland is no different, and he seems to be sold on the i4, which he even admits he might buy, being a former BMW E61 driver.
The launch event was held in Munich, but participants were given an i4 M50 and asked to drive the vehicle into the mountains (about a two-hour drive) in order to get to experience it on different types of roads and, of course, max it out on stretches of autobahn where there is no speed limit.
As a reminder, the most powerful version of the i4 is the M50 dual-motor, all-wheel drive version. It is currently the only electric BMW to have been worked on by the manufacturer’s Motorsport division and it looks like it is dynamically very accomplished, although it isn’t quite as good as an ICE BMW due to the extra weight that it carries around.
The i4 M50 has a 258 horsepower front motor and a 313 horsepower rear motor and their maximum combined output is 544 horsepower and 795 Nm (586 pound-feet). These impressive numbers allow the i4 to sprint to 100 km/h (62 mph) in 3.9 seconds, exactly as quick as a BMW M3, although both models have proven to be quicker in independent testing.
Top speed is surprisingly low for a vehicle with 544 horsepower, even an electric one, being limited to 225 km/h (139 mph), instead of the usual 250 km/h (155 mph) electronic limit. And just in case you were wondering why some reviewers say you really feel the vehicle’s weight through the corners, well, that’s because the i4 in M50 guise, weighs 2,215 kg (4,883 pounds) without driver. For reference, the single-motor i4 eDrive40 weighs 2,050 kg (4,519 lbs).
Here's what we thought of the i4
Source: Bjørn Nyland / YouTube