BMW i4: this sleek and sporty electric car is very nearly perfect
Fancy a fully electric car that doesn’t look like it’s powered by batteries? We test BMW’s answer with its i4 saloon
- Our car: BMW i4 eDrive40 M Sport
- List price when new: £54,495 OTR
- Price as tested: £63,120
- Official range: 348 miles (WLTP combined)
The conversation with the man from BMW started innocuously enough. “Do you want the M50 or E40?” he asked. I wasn’t expecting the question and hadn’t investigated the detail of either.
When I did I was pleasantly surprised. The M50 has the equivalent of 544 horsepower; the i4 range-starting E40 a mere 340hp. The main difference is that the M50 has two motors and four-wheel drive; the E40 a single motor and rear-wheel drive.
Both have the same 83.9kWh battery so that means the E40 wins the range battle with a healthy 348 miles (claimed). Figuring that 544hp would be largely wasted given my likely usage, I chose the E40.
Based on the 4-Series Gran Coupé, the i4 has a sleek four-door body. As its name suggests, it is rather like a long coupé. Our model is in Brooklyn Grey with an interior in Tacora Red Vernasca leather. Externally it’s a handsome sharp-looking design with the blanked-off grille that is a feature of BMW’s latest electric models.
Our car in more detail
BMW has been busy on our behalf ticking the options list. Our car features the £1,500 Visibility Pack which includes laser lights and automatic high beam. Also included is the Technology Plus Pack. For £3,800, this has the Harman Kardon sound system and Driving Assistant Professional autonomous driving.
Last and perhaps most interestingly, it’s got the M Sport Pro Pack for £2,500. This has M adaptive suspension, variable Sport Steering, Y-spoke Bicolour Jet Black wheels, red brake calipers, M Sport seatbelts and the mysterious “BMW Individual high-gloss Shadow Line with extended contents”. The latter evidently needs some investigation…
Initial impressions are very positive. Even though our E40 is the entry model and significantly less powerful than the M50, as with all electric cars it still feels plenty quick from standstill and at lower speeds to put a smile on the face of daily driving.
The interior is nicely built with an excellent driving position while the claimed range certainly seems sufficient to be more than adequate.
Sleek and sporty
The appeal of the BMW badge is well known. Throw in that this is an all-electric version of the BMW 4-Series Gran Coupe with more power than most 3-Series models and you have an almost guaranteed recipe for success.
Although BMW has managed to squeeze the i4’s battery under its floor, you’d never know. This car is low, sleek and handsome, testament to the impressively slim (only 110mm) battery pack.
I’m not sold on the in-your-face kidney grille that all BMWs now have. And being blanked-off to denote an EV doesn’t make it any less unappealing. But even that can’t detract from the classy, sophisticated look that breathes premium coupé.
If you’re looking to seat five in comfort for long trips, this probably isn’t the car for you. But if you want a car to transport you and one other, or you have a couple of younger kids, then keep reading.
This is a rival to the Polestar 2 and Tesla 3, so its four doors have a sporty frameless look and there’s a powered tailgate facilitating access to a large 470-litre load space.
At 4.78m long and 1.85m wide, the i4 sits on the road with the satisfyingly racy stance of a BMW coupé. The door handles are flush fitting (more about them later) and the lightweight 19-inch wheels sit snugly in the arches. In fact, bigger rims would probably look vaguely ridiculous.
The interior is nicely put together and very clean thanks to the monster 14.9-inch central screen. But I think I preferred the iX3’s set-up with a few more buttons for the functions you use more regularly.
That “Individual high-gloss Shadow Line” is actually the gloss black frame around the grille and other areas of the car. Would I have noticed if I hadn’t been writing about it? Probably not.
Would I change anything about its looks to make it more appealing? At risk of sounding too easy to please, the answer again is probably not. Although I do think BMW could do a better job of making that outsize grille look like less of an afterthought…
Adjustable and entertaining
Owners of the i4 won’t be disappointed if they’re after a “real” BMW. Our eDrive40 is rear-wheel drive and has a handy 250kW or 340hp of power.
In a normal petrol car, that amount of power would equal impressively swift performance. It feels more so in an electric model because of the way all the power is delivered instantaneously.
Put the i4 in Sport mode when all that power is unleashed and it is neck-snappingly quick. So swift in fact that the prospect of a faster version – the M50 – seems rather intimidating.
With a lower centre of gravity than the 3-Series saloon, a longer and wider wheelbase and track respectively, and a battery built into the floor structure for increased rigidity, BMW claims it has designed the i4 from the ground up to be entertaining.
As part of its M Sport Pro Pack, our car comes with M adaptive suspension. This sees the electronically controlled damping adjusted on individual wheels for increased agility and ride comfort. Auto-levelling air suspension at the rear keeps the i4 at the same height no matter how heavy the load you’re carrying in the boot.
You can adjust the damping to your preference, too. I find the Sport setting feels as if the car’s hopping from bump to bump rather than absorbing them. For me Comfort is just fine.
Steering settings can be adjusted too. I leave this in Sport mode which makes the car feel nimble, responsive and nicely agile on twisting roads. At motorway speed, the i4 is quiet and relaxed with only a bit of wind noise from the door mirrors, and tyre roar not too intrusive.
One of the i4’s features that I particularly like is the regenerative braking. You can adjust it for strength or leave it on adaptive. The latter will use data from the navigation and car’s movement sensors to adjust the amount of regeneration. So, approaching a bend, it’ll slow the car more than it might on a straight piece of road.
Rather than using adaptive, I prefer leaving regeneration on its middle setting, then using the Brake function on the gear lever. Push the lever away from you to B and it gives you maximum regeneration, perfect for coming to a stop at traffic lights or a junction. The regen is so strong in this mode that you barely need to touch the brake, making driving a predominantly one-pedal experience.
Speaking of braking, rather than feeling rather grabby like other EVs we’ve driven, the BMW’s are just like a “normal” car. The result is that if you do use the middle pedal to slow, it’s silky smooth.
Last and probably least, there’s the soundtrack. As with the iX3 this was developed by celebrated film score writer Hans Zimmer. Put the car in Sport mode and your progress is accompanied by a rather eerie electronic soundtrack.
We think it’s a bit gimmicky, entirely unnecessary and doesn’t even sound particularly good. But thankfully it’s just a bit of icing and BMW has got the rest of the cake very right indeed.
40 driver assist functions
Like all premium cars in the early 21st century, the i4 is festooned with safety equipment. According to BMW it features around 40 assistance functions. The aim is to enable drivers to enjoy themselves at the wheel safely when they want to but let the car take the strain when they’re after a more relaxing ride.
Included are Front Collision Warning which monitors for both cars and people in front. It doesn’t appear overly sensitive and unlike other systems doesn’t get confused and hit the brakes when confronted by walls on bends close to the carriageway.
The Active Cruise Control with Stop&Go function also works well. Again, unlike some other cars, it seems more human in its behaviour. It doesn’t panic and slow down if another vehicle moves into your lane on the horizon.
I like the ‘Set’ feature too which appears in the head up display. This enables you to OK the cruise control for speed limit zones you’re about to enter.
The Lane Departure warning seems to be sensibly configured. Again, unlike other cars, this doesn’t pursue the fruitless task of trying to keep you in your lane on a narrow country road. But when it does swing into operation on the motorway, it offers another level of security by constantly tweaking the steering to keep you in lane.
As part of its £3,800 Technology Plus Pack, our car features Driving Assistant Professional. This uses information gathered from three cameras, one front-facing radar and four side-facing radar sensors to build a more accurate picture of the road.
Obviously the i4 has a reversing camera with bird’s eye view which is handy for parking in the middle of bays. Our car even has Parking Assistant. But worried that my basic driving skills might start to atrophy if I keep them on ice in favour of all this tech, I’ve steered away from using that so far.
One feature that I hope I never need but may nonetheless be very handy is the BMW Driver Recorder. Essentially a dashcam but using images from the car’s onboard cameras, this records all round the vehicle. You can then download footage via USB.
According to BMW you can employ it to record footage while driving through spectacular countryside or in BMW’s own words: “Performing eye-catching driving manoeuvres”(!) Perhaps more usefully, if you have a crash, it enables you to see the 20 seconds before and 20 seconds after impact.
It’s probably fair to say that BMW has pretty much every eventuality covered when it comes to safety. Does it take away from the driving experience? Not really. EVs by their very nature already feel more digital than analogue.
Impressive interior quality
Slip inside the i4 and you could be forgiven for thinking you’d got into a regular combustion-engined (ICE) car. The instruments and gear lever are identical to the ICE versions of the 4-Series Gran Coupé. The only visible difference is the blue power button.
If this sounds like a criticism it isn’t meant as one. I’m a fan of the interior of this car. It feels premium, with high quality materials that have obviously been put together with extreme attention to detail.
I also like the Tacora Red leather seats and the sporty low driving position which helps you to feel cocooned in the front. I like the seats’ adjustable bolsters and the way you can extend the base to support your legs. And the leather-clad Sport steering wheel feels comfortable, too.
This last point might feel like a given but previous sporty BMWs have had a steering wheel rim so thick that it was awkward to hold. Not so with this one, which is also manually reached and rake adjustable.
In addition to adjusting the driving position, you can also alter the ambient lighting inside. I’ve gone for having the strips along the doors and dashboard coloured bright green. But I could have had them pretty much any colour of the rainbow. Or had a different one every day of the week.
Less frivolous is the central screen. This has a rotary controller as well as 14.9-inch touchscreen. I find the controller more accurate and easier to operate than the touchscreen without taking my eyes off the road for too long.
BMW’s iDrive was one of the pioneers of having many of the car’s controls on its screen. More about that later in this report.
BMW describes the i4 as a four-door coupé with seating for five. If that’s the case, the three across the rear would have to be close friends. It’s much more viable as a four-seater. The rear chairs are deep. And unless the person in the front is six feet tall or more, there’s enough leg room in the back for a six-footer.
Foot room is in short supply if those in the front seats have their chairs in the lowest setting. Head room too is limited. Anyone much over six feet will have their head rubbing the headlining.
The boot is a hatchback with powered opening. And if you want to open it in a low-roof garage or you can’t reach it when it’s fully open, you can adjust the height it opens to. The boot itself has a healthy 470 litres of capacity. Fold the rear seat backs and that’s boosted to 1,290 litres.
The boot has barely any load lip but does feel quite high up and shallow. That said, blaming it on the car being electric doesn’t really stack up as it’s only 10 litres smaller than the petrol version’s luggage area. Handily (for BMW), the i4’s boot is still bigger than rival Tesla and Polestar models.
Range is nowhere near the official figure
On paper, the i4 can cover 348 miles on a single charge. As ever, the reality is slightly different – Telegraph testers tend to guesstimate the real-world range to be three-quarters of the claimed range, just to be on the safe side. After a 100 per cent charge, the i4 regularly shows only 230 miles. That then goes up slowly as the car’s computer realises that you’re neither driving like a maniac nor at high speed. Even so, I’ve never seen more than around 300 miles in real range.
Of course on a daily basis that’s more than enough. It’s comfortably two return 50-mile trips, with plenty of range left. More than enough for most commutes. And our PodPoint home charger, which is controlled using a smartphone app, makes home charging easy and convenient.
On longer journeys charging is slightly less convenient. But after a few months I’ve discovered the key to a range anxiety-free life with an EV is to plan ahead. Of course, even the best laid plans can come unstuck. But generally you can find charging points that are fast and available in advance.
Even so, approaching them is still a slightly heart-in-mouth process because you never really know that they’re actually working until you’ve hooked up and charge is flowing into your car’s battery.
So on a daily basis, the i4 more than adequately fulfils its primary purpose of getting from A to B. It’s also easy to spend time with and in. As we’ve already explained, it’s comfortable and the door bins are big enough for a decent sized water bottle. There’s also plenty of storage in the centre console and the wireless phone charging plate works reliably too.
Leg space for back seat passengers isn’t brilliant. But as anyone going in the back is usually only there for a short trip, that’s not such a problem. The boot too is a decent size with enough room for a family’s luggage – assuming they pack judiciously.
One area where the i4 struggles slightly is vision. To the front it’s absolutely fine. To the rear it’s pretty dire. The back window is steeply raked and has no wiper. The result is it tends to get dirty quite quickly and the thick rear pillars mean the view out is limited.
But that’s where the excellent rear-view camera for parking and the blind spot detection systems step seamlessly in. Just as well there is a parking camera too because without one, low-speed manoeuvring would be a stressful business.
Nail-breaking door handles
Think about how you open your car’s door. You probably pull on the door handle to release the latch, then pull the door open with the handle. You can’t do that with the i4.
The lift-up handles are flush with the bodywork which doubtless makes the car half a per cent more efficient through the air. Trouble is, once you’ve lifted the handle, it’s very difficult to keep hold of the handle to pull the door open.
That means I release the handle at some point in the opening process and finish it with the top of the door. The result is sticky fingerprints on the frameless glass. First world problems.
Of more concern to my wife and daughter is the fact that if you have long nails, the door handles stand a reasonable chance of breaking them. More first-world problems…
But by far the most irritating thing about the i4 is the BMW iDrive. Why do I have to sign in before it’ll show me my previous destinations on the navigation? And if you can get a podcast to play by starting it from the phone, why can’t you pause it using the car’s screen?
The latter becomes intensely annoying, particularly when you get in the car; whatever you were listening to last automatically starts playing and there’s no way of stopping it without digging your phone out of your pocket.
The obvious answer is to use Apple CarPlay. That is a tad less clunky in its operation but I don’t like Apple’s navigation. Our solution is that one of us signs in using CarPlay, the other iDrive. Which works if there are two of you in the car and the passenger is happy to control everything. But I thought we’d moved past technology being so painful.
My last niggle isn’t with BMW. It’s with the UK’s lamentable charging network. Having had a near seamless experience travelling to the French alps in the summer, charging on the go in the UK is a much more seat-of-the-pants affair.
Charging points that are out of order; those that take your money without letting you charge; and ones that are ostensibly fast but in reality slow. There is a plethora of problems with the UK charging network that need sorting out fast.
The Telegraph verdict
Full disclosure here: I haven’t driven a vast number of electric cars. But of those I have driven, the i4 is the best overall and probably by some distance. For a start its range is more than sufficient for all but the longest drives.
That’s it’s not an SUV undoubtedly helps with this. The i4’s long, low stance looks and feels more windcheating than the multitude of high-riding wannabe off-roaders that it’s competing against.
I’m sure I’m not the first to think the grille is ugly but the rest of the car more than makes up for it. And I’m particularly fond of the slightly bulbous rear wheel arches hinting at this being the 340hp performance car that it is.
In fact, on our roads, I’m not entirely sure why anyone would think they needed the even more powerful M50 version.
On longer journeys the BMW is comfortable with a very adjustable driving position and super-supportive seats. If you’re feeling playful, the BMW is more than up for it. And the hatchback and folding rear seat backs make it versatile for everyday use too.
By our calculations, efficiency is pretty average for an EV. In our hands, the i4 returned 3.7 miles per kWh which isn’t bad, particularly when you consider the performance on tap.
So would I buy an i4? Definitely. But on the proviso that BMW sorts out the smartphone interface. It’s unacceptable for it to be so clunky in such a premium car.