Sunday Drive by Hormazd Sorabjee: Green goddess
As the BMW i4 enters India, prepare to be tempted like never before. And it comes at a better price too
BMW is fashionably late to the EV party but that hasn’t put it at a disadvantage. Hindsight is foresight in the car world and the Munich-based luxury brand has the benefit of learning from the past mistakes of others. The biggest one? Entering when the market is not yet ripe for the picking, which is what rivals Mercedes and Jaguar did. And BMW is all set to cash in on the now-growing trend, largely driven by other global brands. In December 2021, BMW kicked off its EV innings with the launch of the iX. Now, less than a year later, comes the far more affordable i4.
The i4 isn’t ‘born electric’, a new term for EVs designed, ground up, for electrification only. It is the all-electric derivative of the 4 Series Gran Coupé with which we are not familiar because it’s not sold in India. So, the styling will be fresh and the coupé-like body style the first on an EV in India. So, unique the i4 certainly is. But before we get to the styling, let’s look at the power train. There’s only one power train option, the lower eDrive40 variant, which has sufficient grunt to keep you smiling.
A single rear 340hp motor producing a punchy 430Nm of torque and driving the rear wheels is enough to make the i4 feel like a BMW. But the talking point with EVs isn’t power but range, and that’s where the i4 really scores. A83.9kWh lithium-ion battery pack mounted under the floor is good for a range of 590km in a laboratory test cycle, the highest range figure in India until the Mercedes EQS comes along later this month.
Head turner
The i4 certainly turns heads with its swoopy coupé-like styling and the long bonnet which certainly hints that this car was originally designed to house an engine. My test car kitted out with the optional M Performance spec gets jazzier bumpers and 18-inch alloys which look great. And you just can’t miss that massive love-it or hate-it kidney grille.
The overall interior impression is that of a 3 Series, but to give you an EV feel there’s lots of blue detailing. The BMW logo on the steering wheel gets a splash of blue as does the start button and the gear level. What we haven’t seen before in previous BMWs is the new curved display, which incorporates a 14.9-inch touchscreen and 12.3-inch digital dials. Crisp, bright, and with high-def graphics, the new infotainment system looks stunning and dramatically lifts the ambience of the cabin. However, in the process, BMW has done away with physical buttons for the aircon, which have annoyingly been moved to settings embedded in the screen.
Cabin quality is expectedly very good and the front seats are nice and sporty, but the rear seat is the car’s weakest point. The low roofline, high centre tunnel and a high floor eat into space and tall people simply won’t be comfortable at the back. So, if you are buying this car primarily to be chauffer driven, look elsewhere.
The driver’s EV
The feature list has hits and misses. You get LED lights, memory seats, a 17-speaker Harmon Kardon sound system and a reversing assistant, but there’s no 360-degree camera or keyless entry.
The i4 drives like a BMW that is sporty, entertaining and sucks the driver into the driving experience, something that’s hard to achieve with an EV. The eDrive40 variant isn’t blisteringly quick, but you can use all the power and performance to fullest. Floor the pedal, and the i4 tugs you forward briskly with power building up in a natural and progressive way. The handling is very entertaining, thanks to a feelsome steering and good chassis balance, which allows you to safely push the envelope. However, on bad roads the i4 needs to be handled with care. The ground clearance is pretty low and is an issue over speed breakers.
The i4’s trump card is its very attractive ₹69.9 lakh price that puts it in the same band as the sporty M340i and larger 5 Series. The temptation to go green has never been stronger.
The views expressed by the columnist are personal
From HT Brunch, August 20, 2022
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