Had a ride as a passenger in an i4 M50 (dual-motor AWD) last weekend and I was impressed. I'm not a sedan guy, but the seating position and your relationship to the displays is much more intimate than in the iX.
I think BMW will sell every one (of both cars) they can build.
Test drove an i4 M50 this past Saturday and drove home in my i03, gobsmacked for most of the 65-mile return.
As salesmen of performance EVs are wont to do, I was encouraged, at a stop light, to perform a Launch Control start in the M50. With the buttons dialed, the pedal and brake to the metal, and the light green, it was brake off and then whoosh. I howled, and the salesman squealed as we lifted off above Hans Zimmer's Iconic synths. What an incredible experience the team in Munich has built. Dan Neil, the best working auto writer in the U.S. — he has a master's degree in English literature and is the only car critic to win a Pulitzer prize (to date) — wrote in his review of the M50 that he'd "walk over the broken remains of an M3 Competition to get to an i4 M50." ICE is where the puck was, but all of us here already know that.
Gratuitously optioned, the entry-level i4 eDrive40 is more my speed, budget, and drivetrain (RWD). Even with just one motor in the back, it would be a road-trip rocket. It's such an arresting whale, inside and out (5,000 pounds!) When the waters calm in a model year or two, I could see an i4 in my garage.
Thanks for sharing your driving impressions of the i4, websterize, I'm hoping to get my own test drive before too much longer.
As an i3 owner, the thought of setting a beastly 4,500+ lbs. (2,200+ kg) i4 loose on the road just feels wrong. Plus I don't like the concept of synthesized sound for EVs. Yet my quick spin in that i4 M50 has me rethinking some opinions...
p.s. Dan Neil is very deserving of that Pulitzer Prize – he's a gifted writer.
It is definitely an impressive car, but it is not their best effort. It doesn't have any advancements or major contribution to the status quo. It was OK if it was released 5 years ago. Now it feels outdated before even the first units ship to customers.